# Webstore advice



## jdawg (May 14, 2011)

Hi, I'm interested in creating an online store to sell some of my digital creations, things such as small sample libraries. 

As it will be mainly digital downloads, I dont want to just make a normal website add a couple of paypal buttons and deal with things manually.

I would very much like to go down the proper road using e commerce with possibly some sort of website builder type thing (wordpress e.t.c) with of course a digital distribution system so I don't have to re-upload the .rar file every single time I need to forward the files on to someone. 

Theres so many options out there and the ones that appear good are so insanely high in price that it couldn't work for a start up. 

Any advice on ones anyone has used/use/heard of?

thanks i know this isnt really the place for this kind of talk but this forum should have plenty of sample library pros kicking about who know a thing or two.


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## johnhamilton (May 16, 2011)

Warning: setting up a store online can get expensive!


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## autopilot (May 16, 2011)

virtualmart with joomla does it ok and is free. You can use paypal or your own merchant. 

I haven't personally done the downloads side of things yet, but it is there as an option. (just t shirts and cds...) 

There are plenty of super cheap joomla dudes out there that will set it up cheaply for you if you don't want to do it yourself, and hosting is pretty inexpesnive these days...


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## musicformedia (May 16, 2011)

Wordpress can do everything you want for free:

http://www.huzzer.com/9-mind-blowing-wo ... -will-love

http://ithemes.com/how-to-build-an-onli ... wordpress/

http://wpfeed.com/2009/05/build-your-own-online-store-using-wordpress/ (http://wpfeed.com/2009/05/build-your-ow ... wordpress/)

Emmett


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## jdawg (May 16, 2011)

wow thanks for the advice 

when its all up and running (hopefully in the next couple of months)

I'll post the site up here. 


Thanks again for the help


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## Mike Greene (May 16, 2011)

I'm using Modular Merchant right now for my Sampleholics site. It costs over $100 per month (including hosting the downloads.) They're good, but not great.

Most of the smaller commercial libraries seem to be using eJunkie http://www.e-junkie.com/ which is considerably cheaper, although not as versatile. I'm going to give them a shot, but haven't done so yet.

<EDIT> The minimum cost for eJunkie that includes the ability to offer downloads is $18 per month. Pretty cheap. I could be mistaken, but I think that unless you have more than 500 products (yikes!) then you don't need one of their more expensive plans.


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## Andrew Aversa (May 16, 2011)

Mike: What limitations have you experienced with eJunkie compared to Modular Merchant?


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## Modular Merchant (May 16, 2011)

> I'm using Modular Merchant right now for my Sampleholics site... They're good, but not great.


Hi Mike,
This forum post came up during our regular QA searches. Thanks for the detailed and honest comparison between Modular Merchant and e-junkie. Every bit of feedback we can get is helpful. Since selling downloads is a niche we specialize in, I'd love to know what Modular Merchant could improve on to go from good to *great*. "Good" stinks, "great" is better, and "the best" is the goal.

Any additional constructive criticism would be appreciated. And, if there's any ecommerce-related questions that I can answer for anyone here, I would be happy to provide any advice I can.

Cheers!


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## Mike Greene (May 16, 2011)

Modular Merchant @ Mon May 16 said:


> > I'm using Modular Merchant right now for my Sampleholics site... They're good, but not great.
> 
> 
> Hi Mike,
> ...


Welcome to VI Control! You guys must have one heck of a search engine to have this thread come up on your radar and respond so quickly!

My main problem was that around 10% of our customers would have download issues. They would start their download, then after a few hundred megabytes, the download would suddenly abort, cutting them off. What was interesting was that for the people who had this happen, it would happen on all three of their alloted attempts. Then when we reset their counter, the next three tries didn't work either. Almost as if certain IP addresses or regions would have a permanent "bad connection" with your server or something. We contacted your customer support (who were quick to respond and very helpful) and at first, it was hoped that the problem was a temporary and known problem the server was having. (This was January of 2010.) But this problem would still persist occasionally for a year or so.

The weird thing is that when I tested it myself, everything downloaded fine. I thought maybe there was user error on the part of some customers (always a possibility,) but several of these were people I know who are not rookies to downloading. Then, when we updated Acoustic Kits late last year, I sent myself a link as a test and I couldn't get past the first few hundred megabytes, just like the previous people who had problems. Same IP address as I've always had, so it shouldn't be the IP address or carrier that's problematic. I wonder if maybe some passwords cause problems? Nutty idea, I know, but I can't think of what else could possibly be causing this.

Although this was a hassle for these customers, we got them going by sending them a link to my iDisk, so everybody was happy in the end. Like I said, my sales aren't huge, so it's not that big of a deal for me to offer alternate link methods. I haven't had this problem for the last few months, by the way.

Other than that, my experience with MM has been great. Customer service has been outstanding, which, as I said earlier, is a bigger deal than many might think, since setting up a shopping cart has a lot of unexpected challenges along the way.

My main reason for switching to e-Junkie (assuming I'm happy with my test drive  ) is that since I'm now pretty knowledgeable about shopping carts, I don't need as much hand holding with customer support. $18 versus $100 per month is pretty tempting. Plus I want to have the downloads from my own server since Realivox will be a significantly larger library. This way if there are problems, I can just yank everything off one server and use a different one.


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## Modular Merchant (May 16, 2011)

> My main problem was that around 10% of our customers would have download issues. They would start their download, then after a few hundred megabytes, the download would suddenly abort, cutting them off. ... (This was January of 2010.)


I remember that. That was an issue that affected several of our clients. The servers hosting downloads were assuming the connection was dead roughly 30 seconds into a download, and would disconnect the user in mid-download. 

After the fix for it was released in the first week of February 2010, we didn't receive any more reports of that happening from the clients who were experiencing it. I'm glad to hear that the fix improved the download reliability for you too, considering that selling files doesn't do one much good if the customers can't download them.




> Customer service ... is a bigger deal than many might think, since setting up a shopping cart has a lot of unexpected challenges along the way.


That is so true. In my experience, that should be given consideration when considering an ecommerce solution. Other important factors that will determine which solution is right for you include: 
- how many products will you be selling, 
- do you accept credit cards and/or PayPal, 
- where will the downloads be hosted, 
- how automated do you want the digital delivery process to be, 
- what security concerns do you have, 
- how will the shopping cart be integrated into your website (or will the shopping cart *be* your entire website), 
- is the service PCI Compliant, 
- what features does the cart offer to keep in touch with your customers, 
- will your store be hosted on your own site or hosted by the shopping cart service provider, 
- and can you get help when you need it? 
... Just to mention ten common questions that I scribbled on my hand before starting this post.


jdawg also pointed out something I think is important, which is related to this:


> Theres so many options out there and the ones that appear good are so insanely high in price that it couldn't work for a start up.


"Insanely high price" is a bit subjective (we have plan ranging from $50 up to nearly $700 per month), but I would suggest that typically there's a reason for an ecommerce package's price point. (I am *not* saying that expensive is better; again, the ecommerce package that's right for you will depend on your answers to the questions above.) 

Our price point allows us to provide the level of in-house Tech Support and guidance that we do. However, the sheer size of the WordPress and Joomla communities most likely also result in a library of support info one can draw from. Whether to go with a solution with a central point of contact versus a wide user base with support contributions in various repositories depends on which approach you're most comfortable working with.

I hope this is helpful in some way! Good luck on your search, jdawg. Let us all know what you come up with.


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## Andrew Aversa (May 16, 2011)

eJunkie works very well for ISW; for $19/mo I don't think the features can be beat. Customer support (the few times I've needed it) is excellent and it has extensive integration + analytics. You can get web hosting with basically unlimited storage/bw for $6/mo so not much reason to pay a huge amount for someone else to host your files.

I'd offer some constructive advice for MM, but I honestly don't know what they could do short of slashing their rates to $20/mo (or less) to be competitive with eJunkie. EJ really does everything a sample dev could need, at least in our experience.


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## Modular Merchant (May 18, 2011)

> I'd offer some constructive advice for MM, but I honestly don't know what they could do short of slashing their rates to $20/mo (or less) to be competitive with eJunkie.


Thanks for the follow-up zircon_st, I appreciate it. Comparing Modular Merchant to ejunkie may not exactly be comparing apples to apples, because the two systems do have different feature sets. (In addition to digital delivery and hosting, MM includes email and autoresponders, recurring billing, affiliate, coupons & gift certificate and webpage template tools.)

However, it may be worthwhile for us to look into developing a version that focuses just on the digital delivery features. Stripping out some of the items that may not be of interest to the file-selling community may allow us to provide a "streamlined" version at a lower price point. Thanks for the suggestion, it's definitely food for thought!


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## Andrew Aversa (May 18, 2011)

EJ does have several of the features you mentioned (coupons, gift certificates, template tools, affiliates, etc) but you've actually reminded me of something. One thing that I don't like about EJ is that it is difficult to perfectly customize landing pages and followup emails. For example, when a product is sent out with links and a message, this email can of course be customized, but you can't save the message to a template and then use multiple templates across multiple products. You either use the default template for everything or customize each product's email message individually. A pain.

Likewise, you can set up text + HTML for the actual links page where customers land after buying something, but there is no easy way of creating multiple templates for that either. Thus if I copy and paste HTML across 15 products and then make a change in one, I have to go through the other 14 one-by-one to make that same change again. 

Another feature I would like to see in EJ, and which MM could conceivably implement, is custom fields for a checkout/purchase page. EJ's cart has wonderful integration with any website, but there is no way to add a custom field to the purchase or checkout function. What we wanted to do at one point was set up a simple text field asking "Where did you hear about this product?" or something to that effect, but there is no way to do that.

Just a few thoughts.


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## Modular Merchant (May 18, 2011)

Thanks again for the follow-up and suggestions, zircon_st. I was going to add those two things to our Development Schedule as "feature requests", but during my research I found them to already be in place. So, that was pretty nifty.

The email templates are also as you described. If a template is changed once, the change is automatically applied to all products that reference it.

I'm happy to be able to say that MM has slots for up to ten customizable checkout fields (plus ten more available for attaching to customers). An upcoming software update (version 4) will allow an unlimited number for checkout & customer fields, and allow them to be formatted as text, dropdown menus, list menus, radio buttons or checkboxes.

If you can think of anything else that is missing from your currently ecommerce experience, let me know! Many of the features MM already has came about because of conversations just like this. :D


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## TuwaSni (May 18, 2011)

For digital distribution (if you have a host server already setup) - look into LinkLok. Works with PayPal and other payment options. Auto download links and emailing. Fairly cheap - easy to maintain.

TS


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## Cinesamples (May 19, 2011)

FastSpring.com
Fantastic customer service. VERY solid company.


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## Mike Greene (May 19, 2011)

Hey Mike (whichever Mike you are!) I remember checking out Fastspring when I bought some stuff at your store a couple months ago. The one thing about them that gave me pause was that they charge 5.9% + 99 cents per purchase.

If my math is correct, then for products like Voxos, then Fastspring is collecting around 60 bucks per purchase. Assuming you sell even a few of these per month, that's pretty pricey. Is there something I'm missing? Or is it just that you guys aren't tightwads like me? :mrgreen:


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## jdawg (May 21, 2011)

Yeah im curious to the rather high price involved with fastspring as compared to ejunkie. 

VERY CURIOUS. 

as if fastspring works for cinesamples, then it can definitely handle my very much simpler and smaller needs. :D:D


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## _taylor (May 22, 2011)

TuwaSni @ Wed May 18 said:


> For digital distribution (if you have a host server already setup) - look into LinkLok. Works with PayPal and other payment options. Auto download links and emailing. Fairly cheap - easy to maintain.
> 
> TS



Just what I was looking for! Thanks :D


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## jdawg (May 23, 2011)

Starting to wonder if an e commerce solution might be best. 

something like shopify but running with e junkie.


this really does get expensive 

starting to appreciate the price of libraries, aha


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## Guffy (Nov 5, 2015)

So now - 4-5 years later.. what's the best option for a rookie starting out?

I'm looking for an easy solution like Shopify, and some of the features i want includes:

- Website builder
- Shopping cart
- Automated delivery process
- Able to host the digital products
- Accepts both Paypal and Credit cards.

Until now, i had pretty much decided to go with Shopify, but this thread made me think again.
Is there any better all-around solution at a better price?
It looks like Shopify has an upload limit of 5 GB for digital products. What would i have to do down the road to exceed that limit? Start from scratch with someone else?
As of now, i'm planning to sell a few sample libraries around 2-4 gb each.
Is shopify a decent solution for all of this?

Really appreciate any answers i can get


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## willbedford (Nov 5, 2015)

I'm using Fastspring. As far as I know, there's no filesize limit. They also take care of VAT collection, which is a must for me.


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## TheUnfinished (Nov 5, 2015)

willbedford said:


> I'm using Fastspring. As far as I know, there's no filesize limit. They also take care of VAT collection, which is a must for me.


Ditto. FastSpring has a learning curve on some elements, but the support is extremely quick, helpful and friendly. And the VAT collection thing is a must for me.

Great service.


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## d.healey (Nov 5, 2015)

The best value for money - although a little more work will be required on your part to get set up - is wordpress with WooCommerce and Amazon S3 for file storage + a few addons to make wordpress play nice with S3. I say this is the best value for money because you get unlimited storage via amazon S3, and once you've paid for woocommerce and any other addons you require your only fees will be PayPals.

If you want a solution that requires less work and is also good value look at GumRoad - which can also be integrated with wordpress I believe.


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## willbedford (Nov 5, 2015)

d.healey said:


> The best value for money - although a little more work will be required on your part to get set up - is wordpress with WooCommerce and Amazon S3 for file storage + a few addons to make wordpress play nice with S3. I say this is the best value for money because you get unlimited storage via amazon S3, and once you've paid for woocommerce and any other addons you require your only fees will be PayPals.
> 
> If you want a solution that requires less work and is also good value look at GumRoad - which can also be integrated with wordpress I believe.


Surely you have to pay for the S3 bandwidth though? So only unlimited storage if you have unlimited money...
And even if it works out cheaper overall, I'm still happy to pay a little extra for FS so I can avoid the headaches of VAT collection.


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## d.healey (Nov 5, 2015)

willbedford said:


> Surely you have to pay for the S3 bandwidth though? So only unlimited storage if you have unlimited money...
> And even if it works out cheaper overall, I'm still happy to pay a little extra for FS so I can avoid the headaches of VAT collection.


Yes you have to pay for S3 storage and bandwidth but it is ridiculously cheap and as long as your making at least one sale a month it will cover all your costs. There is also a free wordpress plugin that integrates with woocommerce to handle all the VAT MOSS reports - although you do still need to be VAT registered and send of the return every few months yourself but it doesn't take long to do


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## gsilbers (Nov 5, 2015)

http://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecommerce-selling-advice/top-10-best-ways-sell-digital-goods-online

gumroad seems cool


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## musicformedia (Nov 5, 2015)

Use WooCommerce with Stripe/Paypal and Amazon S3 for downloads on www.vstbuzz.com. Works very well


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## Mike Greene (Apr 25, 2018)

I'm deleting the posts today about the "sell products online" company. I don't _know_ that they're spam, but it does seem suspicious, plus I hate old threads getting revived just so someone can make a product announcement. The person posting about this new site is welcome to post in the Commercial Announcements - Tier 2 section.

I'm also closing this thread. All the info is still here and available, of course, but especially with a topic as constantly evolving as webstores, starting a new thread would be preferable to extending this one.


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