I am starting a business to sell cds of texture photos. I found a
company that will accept money from my customers, and ship them my cd
for $4 a cd. I want to also offer a option to let my customers
download the entire cd for a fee. Currently my only option is to use
turbosquid.com for this service, but they charge 50% of the price of
the product (I will sell the cds for about $60)! What other companys
can I use to offer this service? Note: I would like to use the company
to accept the Credit Card information and charge the user, and then
send me a check at the end of the month minus their fee. I would like
a list of as many companys that can offer this service as possible.
Thank you very much!!

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Clarification of Question by b3and1p-ga on 18 Dec 2002 23:55 PST

Sorry, I forgot to include that I already know about payloadz.com.
Payloads offers a service like I would want to use, but because I will
be selling 5 or more cds at 600mb a piece I would have to buy the most
expensive subscription they offer. I do not have much money, so I
would much prefer to go with a percentage model, where I do not pay
any money unless I sell somthing. In many ways turbosquid is perfect
for what I want to do, except 50% is just outrageous in my mind.
Thanks!

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Request for Question Clarification by haversian-ga on 19 Dec 2002 02:14 PST

Would you be willing to consider a web hosting company instead?  This
would allow you to store the CD image file yourself.  You would pay
for bandwidth, and there would be a monthly fee regardless of how many
CDs you sold, but after just a few CDs a month, it would be cheaper
for you.

If you can get your CD image down to 500M, Hurricane Electric (a
company I have used before, so I just quickly checked their prices as
a reference point) has a plan that will cost you $60/month (what
turbosquid would charge you for 2 CDs), and offers 50GB of traffic per
month, enough for 100 CDs.  Additional traffic is 3 cents/MB, or $15
per CD, half the price of turbosquid.

If that sounds promising, let me know and I will search for the best
reasonable deal.  If you have more than one CD image, let me know how
big the total size is and I will figure that into my search.  If not,
someone will probably find something else for you.

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Clarification of Question by b3and1p-ga on 19 Dec 2002 02:33 PST

Bandwidth or webspace isn't a problem. I already have a dedicated
server on a 100mb internet connection and 500gb+ a month bandwidth.
The problem is I have no idea how to set up a system like this. I
don't want people passing around a user/password for a protected dir,
and I don't want to deal with constantly adding/deleting users. I will
probably have 5+ cds to sell. Right now I don't have any put together
because I am in the planning stages of this website. Like I said in
the comment, unless there is a real easy way to set this up myself, I
would rather have another company deal with the details of payment and
sending the product to the customer.

Dear b3and1p,

This is something I have been looking into for a while. 
And several of my HelpDesk readers have the same need. 

These are sites that do it all for you: Collect the
money, provide downloading software/tools. All you have
to do is list the product and description on your site. 

You don't have the monthly merchant account fees, hosting
fees or product costs. Just net profits. And few headaches.

http://mypublish.com
You can join for free and upload your files. 
They handle the whole transaction. 
They will pay you between 50% and 90% of the sales
price, depending on the price. (Typcially, 70%-80%
for items priced between $10.00 and $99.00)

http://clickbank.com/
They charge you about $50.00 to join.
They are very popular with e-book and digital publishers. 
To learn how to use ClickBank most effectively, you can
read Harvey Segal's e-book, The ClickBank Guide, for free here
http://www.clickbankguide.com/

There was another site I found and I don't can't locate it
in my notes now. It probably had higher fees, so I dropped it.

But, let me know if these don't work for you and I will pull
that one up and see if there are any others. 

As to PayPal? I use it for some of my sites. But I have heard
many readers complain that when there is a customer complaint,
PayPal grabs your money and you rarely get it back. And sometimes,
if the sale is high, their security folks hold it endlessly. 
I wouldn't base my whole financial model on PayPal. It's a little
too scary. (Policies may change now that eBay bought them, but...)

Your TaxMama-ga

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Clarification of Answer by taxmama-ga on 14 Jan 2003 06:43 PST

P.S. Search strategy - I spent weeks searching Google and sites of 
professionals in the publishing industry to see what they were using
and recommending, to narrow it down to these options. (I am working
on a book about online businesses you can start cheaply. 
And Publishing is one chapter.)

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Clarification of Answer by taxmama-ga on 16 Jan 2003 19:29 PST

Dear b3and1p,

I just stumbled on your request about the additional companies
down in the comments.

Let me get back to you in the morning, OK?

Best wishes

Your TaxMama-ga

P.S. If you use the Request Clarification button, 
I will get an e-mail when you post your question.

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Clarification of Answer by taxmama-ga on 17 Jan 2003 18:35 PST

Hi b3and1p,


Most of the sites I had found were for book publishing.
Your files would be too large for them.

But, I did some more looking around for you.
 
This showed up, for $19.99. It looks like a really clever 
application that works with PayPal as the payment tool. 
http://www.ipnpal.com/

Artopium.com lets you upload your music and keeps a 15% commission
http://www.artopium.com/my_artopium.html

Check these out and let me know if they work for you.

Best wishes,

Your TaxMama-ga


Google Search strategy:
publish digital files sell music

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Clarification of Answer by taxmama-ga on 21 Jan 2003 06:35 PST

Daer b3and1p,

Thank you so much for the rating -
and the tip.

Good luck on your CD sales.

Best wishes,

Your TaxMama-ga

great answer! thank you very much!

Hi,

Have you thought about doing this through your own web site. It would
work much the same as selling a downloadable ebook. You could accept
payments through paypal or another online service and you wouldn't
have to split the profits at all. If you keep it to the download, the
only work involved is setting it up and marketing.
Just a thought.

bcguide-ga

Well the reason why I wouldn't want to do it just myself, is because
of all the work involved on my part to make sure it is secure. I have
no idea how to set up a automatic password system for the download
page. And I wouldn't want to add password and usernames manualy for
each new customer. Unless there is a real easy way to do this, I would
rather have another company deal with the details of payment and
sending the product to the customer.

Just a suggestion, I am not a reseacher,

Why not use your own server and rentacoder.com?  You can list the
project, what you need,and your expectations, and programmers bid on
it.  I would think this would be te best option for long-term profit
and ease of use.  You would not need to depend on a third party.  Just
a suggestion though, best of luck.

thanks mteach I will look into that. As I said before, I don't have
that much money (very very little actually), but maybe I could get a
good deal on there. thanks for the link!

I have an idea...

PayPal has a system known as IPN (instant payment notification) that
sends a post to a CGI script, usually after only a second or two. 
This post contains the payer's name, email, payment amount,
everything.

As a host/domain registration reseller, I've seen programs that use
IPN to verify payments sent by PayPal.  Usually, they ask for a PayPal
email address or a last name, and then set up an account or send a
request to another server.  I'm sure there has to be a script out
there that can just forward people to a download site.  PayPal has a
whole page devoted to programs that integrate with IPN. Even if you
can't find a script, Google has a lot of experts who are excellent at
programming in Perl/ASP/PHP.  Ask a $50- $100 question, provide a link
to IPN, and I'll bet you'll get someone to write a script for you.

There are a number of small loopholes in the program, but unless you
plan on selling thousands of downloads, you shouldn't be worried.

If you plan on selling more than 20 or 30 downloads, but less than a
few thousand, a script like this would work well.

PayPal's IPN section:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/ipn-intro-outside

Good Luck,

thatwebpageplace-ga

thanks thatwebpageplace! I found a cool article here:
http://www.superfreaker.com/paypal/softserve.asp
I am looking through this, but I am also looking for websites that
provide this service. Anyone? The qestion is still open.

Try renderosity.com or 3dcommune.com?

Awesome taxmama! thanks. Do you think you could list those other
companys you were talking about?