Ask HN: How do I sell a PDF document? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I sell a PDF document?

13 pointschunkyslink11 comments

I've got a useful business document that I think others would be interested in. It describes how to do something and provides data and text that people might want to copy and use themselves.

Are there any services out there that will let me do this and manage the downloads, licenses etc.

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I offer a similar service via BitBuffet.com (I own/run the site). It's similar to e-Junkie or Payloadz. Basically, you upload the PDF to us, point your PayPal's IPN point to us and we deliver the PDF to purchasers via email (we have a nice short walk-through on how to do this). As a matter of principal, we don't offer DRM of any sort, which might be a deal killer for you.

You could probably build your own system to do this (just grab the POST variables from PayPal IPN response and send off emails, validate codes, etc...), but if you want to check us out, email me at contact at bitbuffet.com and I'd be happy to extend your trial for however long you like (the default is 7 days). Offer applies to any interested HN'ers of course!

Anyone have experience with e-Junkie (http://www.e-junkie.com)? I'm in a similar situation and was thinking about going that route.

EDIT: This May 2010 comparison is interesting (don't miss the comments): http://www.ivanwalsh.com/clickbank/e-junkie-v-clickbank-whic...

http://www.clickbank.com/

They charge a one-time $49.95 activation fee, 7.5%+$1 for sales and $2.50 payment processing (i.e. $2.50 for them to send you a cheque).

They have affiliate support, so you can run an affiliate program using them and have ClickBank handle paying affiliates.

Clickbank is exactly what you want in this situation. You are selling an eBook

Adobe's Digital Editions (http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/) would be my starting point. Of course, the decision ultimately relies on how many you're going to sell ( <500 a month you can manually do these and save coin, more than that you'd want 100% automated and take the hit because you're dealing in bulk).

If I may also suggest an unconventional distribution tactic, you can go the Paulo Coelho route (http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-0...) and release the PDF on the torrent sites to build awareness, since that's one of the biggest challenges.

The book sales numbers in the "Pirate Paulo Coelho" link are really impressive. Thanks for sharing that link!

I would look at http://custdev.com to see how they did it. I bought their PDF.

That said I am interested in a good solution to this too.

These guys are using e-Junkie, which is a great service and I've used them before. They do cater to physical goods as well, but I rather disliked their flash interface.

Not sure if your document could be considered a "book", but a number of services will render physical versions of your ebook for a percentage; you could make it onto Amazon's best-seller list like Gever Tulley: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1526479

Try the Kagi Content Delivery Service. You upload to their servers and they send links to the customer, etc

http://www.kagi.com/kagisolutions/digital.php?page=content

The charge is around 8%, which gets better if you sell more.

Sure, take a look at FastSpring.com FastSpring hosts your (PDF or other type) files at no extra cost as part of the payment processing, merchandising and fulfillment e-commerce service. Amazon S3 is the technology employed for file hosting by FastSpring.

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