Gloria, one of our fave readers, wrote in with a question that inspired today’s post.

When I buy one of your patterns, I am directed to a page for instant download. How do you do that? Is there a website that sets that up for you? I have some patterns that I would like to sell but I don’t know how to set that up. Would you please tell me how this is done?

We thought some of you might also be interested in learning how to sell your creative works as downloadables online so here is a quick and easy breakdown of the steps.

If you have a pattern design, instruction booklet, project tutorial or ebook that you’d like to sell online, the first step is turn your product into a downloadable format that can be easily accessed by your potential customers. Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is the current industry standard and can be easily read by most every computer and the required reader is a free download.

If you don’t already own Adobe Acrobat, which will allow you to create PDF documents, you can use a free PDF converter like Primo PDF or Cute PDF. You can even create PDFs of full size pattern pieces by tiling the images in Acrobat if you have them available in a digital format on your computer.

The next step is to determine what method to use for delivering your downloadables. If your customers must wait for you to email them download instructions they may become irritated at having to wait, and you’re actually creating more work for yourself (and customer support issues) than necessary.  Online customers these days demand immediate satisfaction, especially if they’re purchasing downloadable products, so make it easier on them (and on you!) by automating the process.

We’ve used many different methods of automating the download process over the years, and in fact use more than one method right now, but by far the easiest and cheapest that we’ve found for small businesses is PayLoadz. After testing lots of different techniques, we’ve been with PayLoadz for years and highly recommend them because you can get started for free (premium accounts start at $5/month), their fees are based on your sales so your bill doesn’t go up unless your sales do, and they handle the whole download process on the back end for you.

Once you’ve setup an account all you have to do is upload your product file, type in the description and price, and put up the links on your website or send them out via email. You can sell your downloadable products on eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon too, plus they’ll let you choose whether to allow affiliates to help market your products and it’s as simple as clicking a button. When a customer purchases your downloadable product PayLoadz immediately sends them an email with a personalized link and download instructions, plus any additional information that you specify. All you have to do is check your email for sale notifications!

PayLoadz can be used with PayPal, Google Checkout, 2Checkout and other payment systems, and has support for six currencies so you can even make international sales. The best part is that PayLoadz protects your files and limits downloads through encrypted links to reduce abuse and unapproved file sharing.

This is a great way to get started selling your downloadable products very inexpensively and with  limited need for technical knowledge on your part. Good luck and please let us know how PayLoadz works out for you!