Sell Files

Basically, you have a file. This can be anything. It could be an mp3, a PDF, an Excel file or even a zip file containing several different files. It doesn't matter, all that matters is you have it. And the thing is, you want to sell it. In fact, you want to sell it to anyone that will buy it across the entire website. How do you do this? Well, that's why we're here. We're gonna give you some options to help you accomplish your goal.

For this to work, you need two things: a way to collect money and a way to deliver the file. If you have a PayPal account, you are already half way there! However, the delivery of the file is the tricky part. How are you going to send the download via email? What if its a big download? How are you going to keep only paying members in your download area? Are you going to get up and send an email at 4am when someone buys something? Let's discuss your options.

All this means is you upload your file to your server and then email paying customers with a link to that file. This has two major problems. The first problem is that your customers can share the file URL with all their friends or post it in a forum. That means anyone can download without paying! The second problem is that you need to personally send the URL via an email after every single sale. If you are late or forget, you have one angry customer!

Some like to use this option but also change the file name on occasion so the old URL doesn't work anymore. However, this requires a little more manual intervention and isn't great when you have lots of sales because you are constantly moving the target (besides, its just plain annoying!).

This works slightly better than hosting the file because your customer can't share the URL (they can still share the file though). You'll only want to use this for small files though. Most email services don't allow or attachments much bigger than 5 megabytes. However, you still have to email each customer one at a time. If you are late or forget, you have yet another upset customer!

This is only recommended for people who don't want automation and have small files.

This option is similar to the first option, except now we are protecting the downloadable file with a PHP script. This requires a little programming know-how or a budget for hiring someone with a little programming know-how.

Basically, what happens is this: you set a notify URL for PayPal's IPN system and collect the alert from PayPal that says you had a sale with a PHP script (which may be located at example.com/download/paypal.php). If everything is good, that script will send an email for you with a custom download link. It will also save the info in a database for later.

The other part of script is the download link (which could look like example.com/download/dl.php?key=at8e76gfw5iyn). This script looks at the key it was sent and compares it to the ones in the database. Once it finds it and verifies its authenticity, it streams the file from disk. If the key isn't authentic, it simply fails.

This is a great option if you have someone to build it for you or can build it yourself. This option ensures the customer gets an email right away and can download the file but not share the link without it being typed to their purchase. If you just want this option, but don't want the work associated with it, read on because we have a solution for you!

If you liked the sound of option 3 with instant automatic emails and the custom download links where your file is protected but don't have the programming skills or a couple hundreds dollars to hire someone to build it for you, you might look into a service that works with PayPal to do the same thing for you.

We highly recommend BitBuffet.com for a simple and fast way to sell files with PayPal. Setup is simple, just a few minutes to complete and you can't beat the price: $6 a month for up to 100mb of space or 10 files. There are no limits on monthly bandwidth or sales.

Check the links below for some more resources about similar professional services.