How to sell pdf downloads on etsy

Thank you so much for this nice article. Best wishes for the next post. This is the perfect site for anybody who wants to understand this topic. You realize so much its almost tough to argue with you not that I really would want to…HaHa. Great stuff, just excellent! Rabindranath Tagore Poems in Hindi.

There is no search feature in Etsy for just digital products so you can front load some success by picking a category that is part of the top level searches. This is a really good way to make money. I never use Etsy and today learned something new. Thank you for sharing this. Hi, Thanks for sharing this blog with us, your blog contains very important information for us, I appreciate your work and effort.

I will be more than happy to explain how it works with Dropbox. You go to dropbox, upload the digital good, when the file has uploaded, create a link, and then share the link with the buyer.

The buyer will click on the link and it takes them to a screen to download the file. Hi Nancy! My problem is that Etsy is not accepting my Dropbox link.

I must be leaving out a step? I have a page planner that I am trying to get uploaded. I get some sort of an error message that it has to be so many characters. Hoping you can help with this, thank you!

You would need to include a document in JPG format that has the link on it for people to copy and paste. I hope this helps.

Thank you for this article. I want to sell my art work on Etsy, and offer the digital download. My jpegs, which are just one unknown size, have been printed at several vendors in multiple sizes. Sometimes I need to adjust the placement to get the whole piece in, and sometimes I just give up and take what I can get.

I hope I am making sense and not rambling. Is there an app that you use? I currently use Adobe Photoshop to create and size my digital prints.

In order to secure that your print will not get cutoff is making sure you are sizing it correctly. I am proficient with sizing images for print, but it is tedious to resize each and every digital image in my shop.

Time is money, as they say. Your blog was helpful. Good job. Nancy, I love that you are focused on women entrepreneurs! We have the mindset and I am so grateful for you sharing the skills. Thank you for a great blog. I am looking forward to starting a business on Etsy selling my artwork via digital downloads. I appreciate all the great advice and look forward to reading more. I am glad that you enjoyed the post and find it useful. Thank you so much for the comment and good luck.

I am about to publish my listings of printable art on Etsy. I have tried Keka and some archive app from app store on; none of them was able to reduce the file size significantly. Great question! Unfortunately, their is no way to add a file on Etsy that is over 20MB. What I do is sign up for Google Dropbox, upload the file their, and create a downloadable link. I then upload a message on Etsy download section, saying use this link to download your purchase.

It takes them to Google Dropbox where they can automatically download the file. This has been the alternative way to get the customer the file. Nancy, thank you for your guidance,. Or do I have to go back in once the payment is confirmed and add the link? So the customer first would need to pay for your product. Then you would insert the link into a PDF Format where they can copy the dropbox url and paste on their web browser to have access to the download. Brilliant article Nancy! Hey Nancy.

So many products are available that yours will just blend in. You must take some steps to rise above the competition to improve your chances of being profitable. Are people looking for products like yours? How much are they willing to pay? What sorts of features are nonnegotiable? Can you do anything to differentiate yourself from your competition?

Answering these questions is an essential part of market research. Take time to look at shops selling similar goods. These are your competitors, and their Etsy stores can provide a lot of information.

How are their listings priced? What does their product description include? Is any customization available? Read the reviews, looking for clues to what buyers are seeking. Do they really wish this skirt had a pocket or that journal was a bit smaller to fit more easily in a handbag? You also want to find out what they love about a successful Etsy shop, so you can be sure to offer or even improve on what the customers like. Talk to people you know in real life who are part of your target audience.

Poll people in your Facebook group. Now you can use this information to create your offers and prepare to sell on Etsy. You want to be able to easily answer the question: Why should someone buy from you instead of your competitors?

In other words, what makes your product different or better? This means you should create at least a few samples or test pieces. You need to know:. Once you have some samples, you can take photos of them for your Etsy shop. Remember that images sell, even with digital products, so take time to use good lighting and take quality pictures. You can also create mock-ups using templates such as those offered at IvoryMix. You need to be profitable, so to arrive at your price remember to include your materials, your time and the fees you need to pay Etsy for listing and selling.

Then give yourself some markup. If you need to lower your prices, you need to find a way to cut your expenses by changing suppliers or buying in bulk. Setting up your shop is pretty intuitive, but if you run into trouble you can check out the Etsy help section.

Then create an account with your email address. You must fill in some basic information about your online store, including your language, currency and shop name. Before you start sending people to your shop, complete your profile. You should tell a bit of your story in the About section, to help potential buyers learn about you and your products. Weave some personal information in there to help you connect with your buyers. Adding a personal photo to your Etsy account instead of just a logo or product images can help build a connection as well.

Be sure you use strong keywords and plenty of details. Create digital item descriptions that make people want to buy and that answer the questions buyers will have. I had a Shopify store up for a while and have slowly let it fade away. Honestly it is not Shopify's fault, I am just not interested in doing customer support or helping them log in and find their products. Additionally, I have to generate all the traffic to my Shopify store and that can be a challenge.

Over the last few years I have had very few problems with delivery, but way more customer service is required. Probably my second favorite way to sell digital products is through my email provider. I use them to do my email marketing, which is tied to being able to purchase digital downloads and then to fulfillment. Check out Convertkit here! Again I have to generate all my own traffic, but since it is a part of my regular cost of email, it doesn't need to sell as much to break even or even make me more money!

Alrighty then, let's jump in and talk about digital download products. What the heck are they? One of the best things about digital download products are their ability to generate passive income. If something is a HUGE seller for you and it is not evergreen, then for sure it is worth updating frequently yourself or by hiring a Virtual Assistant to help. But I bet you already have lots of things on your computer that you could launch today. For example, I started my store with worksheets that I had already made to use myself.

I tend to make a new worksheet anytime I get stressed about my work so I just publish them as products as I go! I also had a few ebooks that I had created over the years that I put up. I sell on Etsy so I like to use the site Craft Count to see what is popular. Now, this is NOT to copy but just to find out what other people have sold successfully in the past.

You can check out all the categories related to selling digital downloads and see what they top sellers are doing! Note: Copying other successful people exactly rarely works. You could have your store taken down because of plagiarism. It is better to look at what they do and find something comparable that you could do better than anyone else!

Send out an email asking what your current community needs and then make that. OR do a Facebook survey listing your top ideas and ask which your people would like to see first. When I started I heard this A LOT and never really paid it any mind, but as I have gone on I start noting down what people are asking about a lot and then create products to answer those needs as we go. Now that you have an idea for your first product, I am sure your next thought is, how do I make this a digital download.

Your wish is answered! Encryption and passwords are there to keep an honest man or woman honest! FrancescasFancy Post Crafter. Don't bother with passwords, there are programs that will crack them easily. Best is simple deterrents that don't inhibit your customers. For societies and communities to function at all requires some level of trust. Otherwise it would be pure anarchy which would be a whole other problem beyond the normal commerce here.

I use some PDF security, no edits allowed, but with printing enabled. That way the files can be downloaded directly to the customers system and don't have to reside in an email attachment which can sometimes get blocked by service providers if too large or other reasons. I spend dozens of hours writing the guides which I offer in PDF format. Like any document, there really is no way to guarantee they won't be shared, of course, but I do include a Copyright and Permissions statement prominently displayed on the Contents page.

I think that if someone will share, no statement or warning would stop them, but for some, they just simply don't realize that they are doing an injustice to the creator of the file when they share it. I have just started in the world of downloadable art and wrapping paper!

I am annoyed that all my files are too big for the instant download pdf from photoshop Marianne26 Post Crafter. If you archive them, Photoshop files should shrink appreciably, PDFs not so much. On the Mac anyhow, the file will unzip itself when clicked on from the recipient's desktop. I imagine Windows has equivalent software built in too? Photoshop PDFs tend to be huge. Make sure you are flattening the image first to get rid of all Photoshop layers, making it exactly the size it should be, at the right resolution and no higher.

Be sure to keep the layered Photoshop file in case you need to make any edits later. Really it's about trust. I do password protect the actual downloads on some files - when I share through Dropbox and put a password on there. But that only protects from someone actually downloading it.