digital goods

[speakerfuel]

hi, can anyone tell me which is the best / cheapest way to integrate an ecommerce site with my website? Im currantly looking at payloadz. Is it any good?
Thanks for your time.

[Iwillmakeit]

I find that paypal is the easiest way to do it. :)

[new2bus]

Zen Cart will handle e-goods quite happily.

[speakerfuel]

Cheers guys.
I already have a paypal system in place to sell tangible goods but I need somewhere to store my digital goods. I am using a cheap DIY website builder (mr site) to test the water with my first few products/ideas and they will not look after anything bigger than 75MBs unless I upgrade but even then its nothing anywhere near what ill need. My first file is just under 1GB when compressed which I need to store somewhere cheaply so that when a customer clicks the buy now/ download now button they pay via paypal and then they can download the item. I also want this to be seamless for the customer.
Thanks again.

[BusinessIdeas]

You can just place a paypal button on your site related to your paypal e-mail addy. Store the digital whatever it is on your computer, and send it by email to the customer after payment via outlook express automatically using message rules to automate the process.

[BusinessIdeas]

Obviously you would have to zip the digital whatever to send it by email :)

[new2bus]

The customer is going to download a 1GB file. WOW.

A file that size, you really need to be thinking posting on a DVD or something. I imagine it will compress though.

Zen Cart will send them an email that will not work after a set length of time so they can not send the link to a friend or download it again next day.

[speakerfuel]

- crewgirl Thanks, that sounds good but what happens when your pc is turned off ??
Also it's actually 2 files but sold as one and are already compressed at 962MBs
- new2bus - Thanks, I'm already selling this on a double cd from my site but want to do a download version of it as the duplication / printing costs are just over 4.00 per unit which is quite high but needed to fit the files on.

Ill definately be make my future products smaller!!

Thanks again.

[BusinessIdeas]

- crewgirl Thanks, that sounds good but what happens when your pc is turned off ??

You tell the customer on the site that digital delivery is within 24 hours to their paypal email addy. As soon as you turn your own computer on and open outlook express the product/s are automatically sent to the recipient.

[speakerfuel]

Thanks crewgirl it sounds like a quality idea. I haven't got outlook do you know if it can be done with Mozilla thunderbird?

[new2bus]

Outlook Express comes installed as the email client in Microsoft Windows. Live mail or Windows mails as now is.

[BusinessIdeas]

Outlook Express comes installed as the email client in Microsoft Windows. Live mail or Windows mails as now is. Yes it does, worth mentioning that the op shouldn' get confused between 'Outlook' and 'Outlook Express' they ae two different programs. Outlook Express is the one you want :)

[awebapart.com]

I already have a paypal system in place to sell tangible goods but I need somewhere to store my digital goods. I am using a cheap DIY website builder (mr site) to test the water with my first few products/ideas and they will not look after anything bigger than 75MBs unless I upgrade but even then its nothing anywhere near what ill need. My first file is just under 1GB when compressed which I need to store somewhere cheaply so that when a customer clicks the buy now/ download now button they pay via paypal and then they can download the item. I also want this to be seamless for the customer.
For file sizes of 1GB you really want to be thinking about separate specialist storage, use your web host for hosting the website, use a specialist file host for hosting large files. This is especially the case with cheap hosted sitebuilders like mrsite which stuff thousands of sites on the same server to keep hosting costs down, this cheap hosting results in slow page loads and slow image loads, just think how slow large file downloads would be.

Have a look at www.fileburst.com (http://www.fileburst.com) for separately hosting your files. We use them with one of our digital download clients (and our custom version of osCommerce (http://www.awebapart.com/home/sitebuilder_features) supports the feature of having download files stored on a separate server).

Forget about normal email, most normal email accounts have maximum email message sizes (10MB, 20MB, etc), but there are some specialist website services aimed at sending large email (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=send+large+email&meta=).

Some people have mentioned zipping or compression, but for your products audio samples (and for other businesses with products like video, and images), general zipping wont reduce file sizes since zipping is aimed more at text/data/exe files, which means you have to use specialist file compression, like mp3, but your clients might not want this type of compression (due to quality loss).

I would also seriously consider the physical DVD shipping approach too.

[speakerfuel]

Cheers, just checking your recommendations out now. Im quite interested in the send large emails option and ive emailed a couple of companies to see if they can help me.

Regarding file compression, the files are already in a compressed audio format (Rx2 from .wav and then rfl) ive tried zipping them up after this but they dont get any smaller so this is not an option.

Mrsite only gives me 150MB total space for everything website, emails, images, audio etc... but its an ideal first time site builder for someone like me who is starting a business in my spare time / as a hobby.
Also im selling the files on a double cd already but just like the thought of offering a download version as I think people are more likely to buy it if they can have it ready to use straight away.

Thanks again.

[new2bus]

how are you going to put guards in to stop piracy.

You need the download link to expire. I can not see the email working because of the file size alone.

You need to host the file on a server, then when someone purchases they need to be sent a link to the file they have purchased. The link will expire after say 3 days or whatever then someone can not just post your download link on forums or email friends and family with it.

I know you have a cart already set up but I would suggest the easiest way would be to abandon your existing cart and use one that will cater for electronic downloads.

For instance your existing site could still exist, but put a link in to another cart then they make a purchase from that one. You can still set up PayPal on the shopping cart.

So instead of Online Shop taking them to page2.htm it takes them to your cart. Now the bad news, you would have to purchase hosting for your cart and it would have to have enough storage for your files.

The other way would be to have a link on page2 that sends them to your other eCart, bit messy maybe.

[speakerfuel]

Cheers guys for all your input. Ive taken all your ideas onboard and have been looking around the net all day and have come up with this solution please let me know any pros and cons you may have.

1 Upload the file to rapidshare (premium membership is quite cheap)
2 Sell on my own website via paypal but because of my storage restrictions what the customer receives is an email containing a text / pdf file attachment (instead of the actual purchased file) that has a download link to the file stored on rapidshare?
3 I can expire the file myself after a few days and then re-upload it for any future buyers.

Is this a good idea? Its maybe not as seamless as I wanted but it's quite a cheap way to do a quick sale for a small business like mine.

Cheers for all your input!!

[new2bus]

1 Upload the file to rapidshare (premium membership is quite cheap)


You have premium, but your customer does not. It will work but your customer has to be told instructions in the email to click on free and the sequence to use, so they do not end up paying twice.

Do not name the file anything that is readable by a search engine, your customer has a link so it is no problem. so "123wrthj678.zip" should be quite acceptable.

Remember that upload is not as fast as download, so to keep uploading a 1mb file will take time.

Should work though in the interim.

[speakerfuel]

You have premium, but your customer does not. It will work but your customer has to be told instructions in the email to click on free and the sequence to use, so they do not end up paying twice.

Do not name the file anything that is readable by a search engine, your customer has a link so it is no problem. so "123wrthj678.zip" should be quite acceptable.

Remember that upload is not as fast as download, so to keep uploading a 1mb file will take time.

Should work though in the interim.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. i want it to be hassle free for the customer otherwise there's no point in doing it as I would like them to return in the future.

Reading what I want and what other options you and the other contributors to this topic have made, what do you think is the best way??
Ideally I want them to click a button on my currant website and be able to download the file after paying via paypal and then return to my site.

Thanks.

Appreciate all of your input.

[new2bus]

http://storeandserve.com/?site/Direct_Link-info

you could have a word with these chaps. I have not used but the blurb says it seems to be a painless experience with no ads.

[nancy_18am]

try amazon,ebay,dell,onsale and fogdog

[new2bus]

Try them for what? I do not understand.

try amazon,ebay,dell,onsale and fogdog

[nancy_18am]

Try them for what? I do not understand.
he asked for e-commerce site and i give him some

[new2bus]

he asked for e-commerce site and i give him some

With you nancy, but a bit of a misunderstanding; the OP wants to integrate a digital download of eProducts from an e-commerce site that he currently owns. He is presently selling a physical DVD on the site that requires posting, but he wants to give the customer the option of downloading the file instead.

The e-commerce site is using PayPal buttons.

So basically the OP wants suggestions how to implement the eProduct side.

[nancy_18am]

With you nancy, but a bit of a misunderstanding; the OP wants to integrate a digital download of eProducts from an e-commerce site that he currently owns. He is presently selling a physical DVD on the site that requires posting, but he wants to give the customer the option of downloading the file instead.

The e-commerce site is using PayPal buttons.

So basically the OP wants suggestions how to implement the eProduct side.
sorry for miss understanding
i understand now
thanks

[shopintegrator]

Hi,

You could use the Shop Integrator ecommerce solution as a single solution for your tangible goods and for your electronic content delivery. Find out more at www dot shopintegrator dot co dot uk or feel free to ask us more questions.

Sell Downloadable Electronic Content

Shop Integrator ecommerceExpress takes the hard work out of selling and automatically delivering electronic content online (any files).

Upload and store files in your Shop Integrator accounts secure controlled file area on our server. Completed customer order payments automatically trigger an email to the customer directing them to your ecommerceExpress customer download website (managed by us). The time period the shopper has to download the file(s) and the maximum number of downloads per file is controlled by you. The file delivery to the customer all happens without any manual interaction from you, so doesn't createw work for you or delay things for your customers waiting for you to send them files.

Tangible Goods
Shop Integrator ecommerceExpress takes the hard work out of selling tangible deliverable goods online.

When the customer goes to the online checkout you may automatically have your shipping costs calculated and added to the customers order, along with any country specific taxes.

Choose which ever delivery companies you want because ecommerceExpress gives you the power to create multiple simple fixed cost or advanced total order weight and destination country delivery plans.

Offer your customers the choice from as many different delivery plans as you want to create, such as 'Express Next Day' or '3 Working Days' delivery options?

Works With PayPal
Our ecommerce web page plug-ins and shopping basket service use PayPal to allow shoppers to pay you for their goods, so you are already familiar with this.

Everything else in the online shop prior to collecting the money with PayPal is where our ecommerce solution gives you a wealth of features and a professional looking online shop. It is simple to place on your website, just as simple as adding a PayPal button on your site, so it means you have no software to install on your laptop/desktop or on the web host where your site is located. You still choose which ever web hosting company and domain name registration company you want to use.

Regards
ShopIntegrator

[speakerfuel]

thanks. sounds good ill check it out and get back to you

[shopintegrator]

Hi speakerfuel,If you like, let me know what your existing web site is, here or via a PM, (I see you don't have enough posts for links yet, so the text name of your domain name). I will then be able to put together a quick one page demo for you so you get a real feel for how exactly it would work in the context of your own site?Regards,Shop Integrator

[speakerfuel]

Are the unit prices pcm or per year? its a bit vague.

[shopintegrator]

Hi speakerfuel,

The subscription price is per year.

Regards,
Shop Integrator
http://www.shopintegrator.com/