A step-by-step guide on how to sell downloads

Creating an eBook, music, software or other digital download is fun. It can be exciting to think you will be making money with your own creation. Numerous digital items sell online each year, from images to legal documents. The question many people have is, “How do I successfully sell downloads when they are ready?” There are quite a few factors involved in the answer, such as being organized, finding sales points and choosing download providers that help ensure you will make money from selling your digital downloads.

Organizing Your Business

Organization is essential to your digital downloads business. You need a plan once you’ve reached the stage where the product is in its final digital format. Determine what your primary sales tactic will be. Figure out your target audience and how much people will pay you for the work you created. You might need to test your market to determine this. Maybe you can survey your audience to determine the level of interest they might have. That can help you determine whether you set the price too high or too low.

Figuring Out Your Sales Points

Several options exist for selling your item: your own website, a marketplace through a download service provider and online stores. All three will be analyzed in this section to help you sell downloads.

• Your own website: You have complete control at your own website; you can link blogs, social media and email. You decide, on your site, the look of your store for selling downloads. Your own website requires a shopping cart to sell downloads. You can hire a professional to help you manage and market the website.

• Downloads marketplace: Download service providers offer marketing tools, analytics and a secure file hosting for your digital goods. A marketplace ensures you have multiple payment methods and automated delivery to sell downloads. The marketplace is attached to the download service provider. Usually a download service provider can provide the payment platform and delivery solution for your own website, too.

• Online stores: Amazon, eBay and others such stores can be used to sell downloads. These online stores can bring you lots of exposure.

Marketing Your Digital Downloads

Marketing is one of the most important factors in selling downloads. A product sells only if your target audience knows it exists. Great products fail every day if no one knows about them. And mediocre products can sell well because of great marketing.

Marketing requires you to understand your target audience. Say you sell nonfiction eBooks about how to track your genealogy. As people get older, they often want to record their family history to share with their children. This involves tracking down their ancestors and adding to the information they already have so that the family tree is as complete as possible. Here, your target audience is most likely people between the ages of 40 and 70. This is a wide range, so you could market the eBook for each decade, narrowing down the target audience with three marketing strategies.

Article writing is necessary to attract your target audience. You need to use some search engine optimization in the articles to ensure your audience can find them. You would also include in the articles a link to your site. If you don’t want to write the articles yourself, hire a professional who can use keywords to target your audience.

Search engine marketing uses pay-per-click and other advertising methods to get your site in the search engines. Hiring a professional might be of help here to ensure you are targeting your market.

Press releases, blogs and social media are ways to use writing and sharing to market your digital download. Social media, in particular, is a powerful way to market your product. Starting a Facebook page, a Twitter account and sharing interesting content are important. Just posting to remind your audience that you are there is not enough. You need to post content that engages an audience.

Affiliate marketing options exist, too. Affiliate programs gain you the expertise you need to market and sell downloads. Professionals from all walks of life can help sell downloads where you wouldn’t be able to yourself. They make a commission for the sale, while you reap the benefits. You sell more this way.

Ready to Start Selling

Your product is created and finished for sale. You’ve set a price to sell downloads. You examined sales points to publish your download for sale online. You looked at marketing to determine which marketing activities would work best for you and whether you need to hire an expert. Now you are almost ready to sell downloads.

Compare platforms—particularly download service providers. When it comes to digital downloads service providers, you want one that offers resources and tools that help you become a success.

Some providers offer a shopping cart with a file server. You would upload files you want to sell so that the payment process can be completed with automated delivery. A provider like this might be suitable for a small business, but if you plan to be something bigger, look for a provider that offers more than a simple shopping cart and delivery service.

PayLoadz is a digital downloads service provider that offers tools to sell downloads and to deliver and market them. This company offers you a storefront, multiple payment options, a shopping cart, a secure file server and automated delivery. It integrates with your own website and additional stores like eBay. PayLoadz also has an active affiliate network that you can use to find the affiliate partners you would like to use to promote the downloads that you will sell.

To sell downloads online successfully, use all the tools available to you. This guide showed how to begin and follow through to help ensure you make sales. Multiple download service providers are out there, but you’re unlikely to find a better one than PayLoadz. PayLoadz also offers a free account: You don’t pay for the tools you use to start selling. When you reach a point where you have made a certain amount of sales, you have the option of upgrading to a paid account to access more tools. With PayLoadz, you don’t pay for the services you use until you actually sell downloads.

Find us at www.payloadz.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/payloadz Twitter: www.twitter.com/payloadz