Best way to setup a download after payment process

Couldn't quite figure out how to search for this topic so forgive me if it's been asked already.

Here's the question...
A friend of mine wants to sell e-books wherein she gives a snippet then you pay to download the rest of it or perhaps view it.

How do you go about this and what would one need?
Thanks in advance to all those who answer.

 

I take it that you are referring to Paypal. If so, use the Merchant Services Buy Now Buttons option. (You will need a Premier or Business Paypal account for this).

Once you fill in all the necessary details, click on 'Add More Details' button. This will bring you to a second page to enter more info.

The simple way would be under the 'Customize User Experience', enter the URL to download the e-book at 'Successful Payment URL:' That would be the page in which the buyer would see after he successfully paid for the e-book.

 

U can also use e-junkie,they have their own mode,u need to link their buy now button to ur sales pages and they will deliver automatic download after successfull payment .

 

For real? That's it?
No shopfront or anything?

Thanks eddy and jimmy; I'll pass it on.

If anyone has any other ideas; feel free to comment.
Thanks again...repped (I don't think I can do both, though) **apparently I can**

 

Yes, with PayPal it is that easy. You just need a page with the download link on it to send them to after a successful buy.

There are a few details you might want to consider though. Make sure the file name of the page is random so someone couldn't do a search of your domain name for a url like /download/*.pdf or something.

Also, if it is an e-book you will want to zip it first. If you do not and the Googlebot comes through your site and sees the link to the book they will offer an HTML version of it on a SERP. A nofollow tag on the link to the download will also help.

I know this from experience. When I first started out, I had a PDF book sitting on my webhost for downloading. Noticed that it had been accessed quite a few times more than it had sold. Was doing a search to investigate and there it was on the SERP page in not only PDF but HTML format for anyone to help themselves to.

A bit more research and I found that the bots will not do this to a zipped archive file.

Good luck with your project.

 

^^ This.

You'd set it up in a similar fashion with most processors. If you have a good sized archive of ebooks you might also want to look into a download manager.

 

Thanks guys...it's not my project but this is great knowledge.

Patrician, that was most appreciated...you too RedXer

 

Thanks so much for the terrific info. I wondered if you
have any suggestions for download mangers?

Also, any advice on doing the same thing with audio?
I am a musician and would love to create downloads
of my albums.

Don't know how to begin. I have the CD loaded into
my MediaPlayer. How to I proceed?

You are all so knowledgeable. Thanks for any help.
God bless

 

There are a lot of open source CD rippers that will turn your albums in to MP3 format suitable for web delivery. One of the most popular, and the one I used when I switched my CD library to digital years ago was CDEX http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

iTunes will do it too.

I know this may sound like self promotion since I'm one of the guys behind a service that does this, but you really shouldn't rely on a hidden download URL to protect your products from theft. All it takes is one paying customer to post your download link on a forum or blog and everybody will be listening to your music for free. You need to either subscribe to a service or buy / build a script that will generate a unique, expiring download link for each customer. That way, even if they share your download URL it will only work for x amount of time before it shuts down automatically. You can also employ a download attempt limit type system that will limit the number of downloads of your product to 2 or 3.

Security through obscurity is a myth. That's all hiding a download link really is, and it makes it a trivial task to steal your stuff without paying.