# The Most Popular eCommerce Store Platforms for Selling Sample Libraries & Plugins



## pulsedownloader (Oct 14, 2020)

So you’ve created a sample library, sample pack or plugin and now you want to sell it, but where do you start? The first steps in creating your online store can seem daunting – *what platform should you use*, *how much will it cost*, *what is the best platform*, *what functionality will you need etc.? * 

Its important to think through these questions first before deciding on the final platform that you’ll use for selling your products as once you’ve created your store, its often difficult to migrate to a different platform further down the line.


When first setting up your store, its easy to go with whatever eCommerce solution is the quickest and easiest to setup. However, once you dive deeper into each platform, you’ll see that its important to really note the functionality each offers and how this may affect your business in the future. For example, Shopify is very simple and quick to setup, but a lot of extended functionality (like custom branded invoices for example) requires an external “app” which has an additional recurring monthly fee. Additionally, some platforms are more focused on physical products rather than digital products. Again, Shopify is very intuitive to use, but the functionality for offering digital downloads is not straight forward and requires an additional “app” – some of which require monthly payments.

Before you look at the platforms, here are some questions you should answer first:

Do you need to calculate and charge VAT to customers within Europe (VATMOSS)?
Does GDPR apply to you?
What size are your products? How will you handle downloads? Where will you host your files (eg. Amazon S3) and will that integrate with your store?
How much time are you willing to spend on this? Do you just want a quick setup, or would you rather build a more robust solution that you can expand further down the line?

Additionally, here are some of the most terms you may...

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Read the full article here: https://pulsedownloader.com/the-mos...atforms-for-selling-sample-libraries-plugins/


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## JeffWinger (Dec 18, 2022)

A quick way to implement a multi-vendor system is using the WordPress platform. It's much easier for beginners who want to start Ecommerce Development. You install WordPress, implement a theme, and start building your site from there. I like this method because the music is affordable, and you get a lot of support from the theme creator. The theme pairs well with Easy Digital Downloads to sell downloadable products, and your users can log in with their social accounts to speed up the whole process. Overall, I would say that this multi-vendor option works well for any business.


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## pulsedownloader (Dec 18, 2022)

Cool thanks for that in depth feedback


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 18, 2022)

Thanks for posting. It looks like a tough area to navigate. A lot of preset and sounpack designers seem to be using Gumroad rather than having personal custom sites. It's something I'll might be more interested in working out in a couple of years.

The Pulse shop, or Loot audio are very good from a customer's point of view. But again, those are instead of having an independent webshop.


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## pulsedownloader (Dec 18, 2022)

Yes Gumroad can be useful too - the issue is these things are continually changing. Just today Gumroad increased their rates making them less competitive at a whopping 10% (but still a good option). As with most things, the best thing to do is just try a few and see what works best for you


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## Evans (Dec 19, 2022)

pulsedownloader said:


> Does GDPR apply to you?


One quick comment! Unless it's a non-EU company that does not sell goods or services to EU citizens (oversimplifying a bit here), this should always be assumed a "yes."

That is, GDPR protects the personal data of people in the EU, regardless of where the company is.

Sure, it gets murky based on things like company size, types of data processed, or a regular/recurring nature of the data processed by the company. But unless someone has very good lawyers and a lot of money to spend on them, it's safest and often easiest to just comply up front for all interactions.


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## pulsedownloader (Dec 20, 2022)

@JeffWinger and @SarKatush - two new members with only 1 post each, both commenting on the same thread about ecommerce solutions/platforms. Totally not going to be spammers


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 20, 2022)

pulsedownloader said:


> @JeffWinger and @SarKatush - two new members with only 1 post each, both commenting on the same thread about ecommerce solutions/platforms. Totally not going to be spammers


How dare you! I went to school with both of them. And their parents!


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## nolotrippen (Dec 20, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> How dare you! I went to school with both of them. And their parents!


Haven't had my coffee yet so I read "and they're perverts" I'll go away now.


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## Bee_Abney (Dec 20, 2022)

nolotrippen said:


> Haven't had my coffee yet so I read "and they're perverts" I'll go away now.


The funny thing is, that's what I thought I wrote. Blame auto-correct!


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## Nimrod7 (Dec 20, 2022)

Platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce can work for simple shops as they are, but will need some kind of customization as the shop grows and needs to handle different, more complicated scenarios. 

If you're not a software engineer, then you have to rely on plugins an extension at a monthly cost (for invoicing & tax collection, distributing your content). Even if you are, it's often not worth reinventing the wheel. It's time consuming. 

Then you'll have to integrate some kind of payment gateway. Paypal have high fees, but not all people (or countries) have an account. It also seems to be the preferred (and more secure option) from the ones they had. 
Stripe is another one I would go for. Good API to integrate it, quite reasonable of fees. 

So you have to consider, hosting + whatever plugins / extensions + payment gateway fees + distribution costs (CDN or some kind of bucket storage). 

Then as you grow, you might need to further customize your shop. That means paying a dev to create extensions specific for you. 
If your endup getting a significant customer base you might also need to integrate other tools to parallelize the tasks (at an additional cost), like Zendesk. 

And that loop goes forever.


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