These days, everyone can be a creator. Technology has democratized the creative process, and almost anyone can now sell creative products such as music, photography, videos, eBooks and artwork online. But while online marketplaces will guarantee you a lot of visibility, there’s a lot you have to give up in return: marketplaces often take a significant cut of your sales, you’re not in control of the look and branding of the site and sometimes you don’t even have control over the pricing of your products.
This is where digital sales services come in handy. They connect you and your customers directly but, at the same time, handle the sales and digital distribution, cutting out the hassle and letting you focus solely on the products. With these services, you’re in complete control of the pricing of your products and the branding on the site, not to mention the fact that these services won’t take a 70% cut of your sales. Here are 10 such services that you may just want to take a closer look at. (Source: Hongkiat)
Pulley 2
Pulley is a spinoff from BigCartel, offering a simple shopping cart system for selling your music, videos, eBooks, fonts and other digital downloads. You can embed Buy Now buttons onto any websites, and can even track your sales with Pulley’s statistics view. Pulley operates on a monthly subscription model, but also offers a free 14-day trial so you can see whether Pulley is right for your eBooks, fonts and digital products.
Fees: $6/month – $49/month. No commisison.
DPD
DPD offers one of the more customizable services for selling your digital art, eBooks, movies, music and so on. It lets you customize your cart, checkout, delivery pages and emails using a simple WYSIWYG editor. It also supports selling keycodes, subscriptions and even physical products. Bandwidth and sales are unlimited for all subscription plans.
Fees: $10/month – $30/month. No commission.
Simple Goods 1
Simple Goods is another one of the few services for selling digital content such as eBooks, music and design work that accept credit card payments directly, with low fees. Aside from the low fees, Simplegoods features MailChimp integration, mobile readiness, in-depth analytics and insights as well as the ability to embed a checkout button directly into your site. Simplegoods also has unlimited file storage and bandwith.
Fees: Up to 3% commission per sale. Free to $29 monthly fee.
FetchApp
FetchApp started as a Shopify app, so it offers easy integration with Shopify, which is handy if you also have a Shopify account and wish to link the two. It also has an API if you wish to integrate it with your existing webiste. FetchApp plans have no limit on the number of eBooks, music files, videos or digital artworks you can upload. Bandwidth is also unlimited.
Fees: Free – $500/month. No commission.
Selz
Selz is a feature-rich service for anyone looking to sell artwork, eBooks, music, software and other digital content. Selz will be of interest to moviemakers, since it supports files up to 4GB in size. Selz has a WordPress plugin, and each account comes with a free Facebook store account. Each store also has a built-in direct messaging feature. Selz provides audio and video previews, PDF stamping and the ability to set “pay what you want” pricing. Selz also has no bandwidth or storage limits.
Fees: Upto 2% commission per sale + 2.9% processing fee. Free to $35 monthly fee.
Bonus: A Few More
Gumroad 1
Gumroad is one of the newest services designed to help you sell digital downloads of your eBooks, videos, photographs and software. One of the most interesting things about Gumroad is that it deals with credit card companies directly, bypassing PayPal’s 2.9% surcharge. Another benefit of this is that sales on Gumroad will work in countries that are not supported by PayPal. Gumroad also lets you sell physical products.
Fees: Free – $10 a month. 3.5% + 30¢ commission per sale.
Sellfy
Sellfy claims to provide the simplest way to sell your eBooks, photographs, music, themes and other digital downloads. One of the most interesting features of Sellfy is that you can offer discounts to customers who share your products via Twitter and Facebook. You can track the effectiveness of these discounts and see what effect discount offers will have on sales. Sellfy gives you unlimited storage and bandwidth for your digital art, eBooks, programs and digital content.
Fees: 2% commission per sale. $29 – $99 monthly fee.
SendOwl
SendOwl will appeal to anyone looking to sell digital content, but it has a couple of features that will make it particulalry appealing to those who want to sell software, eBooks and PDF files. For one, SendOwl has a PDF protection feature that will stamp each PDF download with the customer’s name and e-mail. You can also inform customers of product updates and let them download the update for free.
Fees: $9/month – $39/month. No commission.
Happy learning!
