Selling downloadable products

[sitopia]

Hello,
I am a bit simple and the answer may be in the manual, but I cannot find it.

Can you have as a product, an ebook or music for example that you can sell and when payment has been received, the purchaser get the downloaded version of the book or music?

Regards

Greg

[dferguson]

Hi Greg

ezimerchant Pro is suitible for physical products only - It cant be used for ebooks or other digital products.

[sitopia]

Thanks.

[Lance]

Dear David,

I have a way of using ezimerchant for downloadable products that works quite well. Particularly ebooks or reports.

Simply establish a product category with no name, which is a branch of a current category, so it's hiiden from the front page of your site.
Enter a blank product so the page become active.
Then add an attached file, for this I have used a PDF that uses 128 bit encryption with a password.
Then up load your site.
Then go back through your web-browser and open the PDF file.
You will then be able to copy the direct URL of the attached file.

When you get a sale for an ebook for instance, once your payment has gone through you send your client the link (attached file URL) and the password and they can download the file themselves from your site.
This has been working well on my two sites without complaint. Obviously, this will only work with PDF type files.
All the best

[dferguson]

Hi Lance

Only trouble with this is that if they share the link once they get it then anyone they give it to will get access to the file.

A true digital checkout would only give access to the file for a limited time - to protect it.

But if your customers are half decent then they wont share the link so its not a problem :-)

Note: Instead of going through the trouble of creating hidden categories etc, you can get ezimerchant Pro to upload your PDF by simply coping it into the BUILDxxxx folder (where xxxx is your rego number) - If you like you could put it in the subfolder called 'files'

Then when ezimerchant Pro uploads your site the PDF will get uploaded to the server into the files folder.

This will save you creating all those unnecessary categories and products.