Easily sell your ebooks on your blog or web site or anywhere
Dec 3, 2013 7:31:34 GMT -8
chelsfield and jaydax like this
Post by Ted on Dec 3, 2013 7:31:34 GMT -8
Smashwords authors wishing to sell their ebooks on their Wordpress.com hosted blog, their own blog, or their own web site have an easy and inexpensive option other than PayPal or similarly expensive solutions; gumroads.
Selling directly.
If you have a website, the Gumroad overlay lets you add our purchase flow directly into your site. This lets you own the entire purchase process, instead of having to direct your customers off of your site to complete the transaction. The lower friction also leads to skyrocketing conversion.
Getting Paid.
Gumroad gets you paid every other Friday, for all sales up until the previous Friday. For example, you will be paid on the 14th for all sales up until the 7th.
If you choose to be paid through Direct Deposit (ACH) or PayPal, you'll get paid as long as you have a balance pending of $10. The minimum balance required for Zengin payouts is $100. We cover all fees for both payout options, regardless of country.
Sales Tax.
Do I have to collect taxes?
Possibly. If you are in the United States, you must collect and pay sales tax when you have nexus, or sufficient physical presence, in a state.
A company's physical presence can be permanent: corporate headquarters in Tucson. Or a company's physical presence can be temporary: a traveling salesman meeting customers in Phoenix. In both cases, the company would be subject to Arizona state sales tax.
Only a tax professional can help you determine where and when you are subject to tax, but a good rule of thumb is the state(s) where you live and work.
In other parts of the world, you may also have to pay VAT (value added tax).
For certain countries (United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain), Gumroad lets you limit purchases to just that country. This helps if you’re not sure about tax laws beyond your borders.
NOTE by Ted: For those with a legal or accounting background will find this link to the IRS valuable in regards to Intangible Personal Property. Years ago I 'licensed' copyright to my publications. The sale of one of my ebooks did NOT include any rights other than the right to read and print for personal use and specified the ebook was NOT being sold but instead licensed under the terms within. Revenue Canada assured me I did NOT have to collect or charge for GST as I was licencing an Intangible Personal Property and not selling it. Residents of other countries, the US and the UK for example, may want to check laws regarding tax on licencing IPP's.
The catch. There's always a catch.
Buying something on the net always requires an SSL connection, the HTPPS// you see in all secure URL's. An SSL certificate costs money. Even Godaddy charges $75/year for an SSL certificate.
Gumroad requires an SSL connection, the old HTTPS you see on all secure sites. Yup. You have to pay to play. Or do you?
ME? I'm frugal. I don't want to have to buy an SSL certificate.
Some friends may even say I'm cheap. I use a free SSL conversion method in my FireFox browser to ALWAYS have an SSL connection on ALMOST ANY site. Chrome users also have the ability, but not IE browsers. Chrome is very popular on many desktops, mobile phones and devices, and FireFox is the preferred browser for safe and secure Internet surfing.
The free SSL extension is called HTTPS Everywhere, and is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. HTTPS Everywhere is produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site. The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by using a clever technology to rewrite requests to these sites to HTTPS.
Security
HTTPS Everywhere icon on your browser has a popup window you can activate when you visit a standard HTTP web site for the first time, and in that window is a list of sites with a red X beside them indicating you haven't yet allowed HTTPS Everywhere to accept that site as trusted. To accept that site you click on the site next to the red X and it changes to a green checkmark.
The HTTPS Everywhere icon is located on the right side of your browser (in mine it is, yours may be different) with a number beside it indicating the number of sites you've approved for HTTPS Everywhere. Some have a red X next to the name of a site - with "(disabled)" beside it - such as doubleclick.net.
Some sites have "(partial)" next to its name, and may have an X or a checkmark.
Visiting a standard HTTP site for the first time usually displays a red X with (partial) and sometimes just a red X; the guardian newspaper site for example. Clicking on "the guardian" in the popup turns the red X to a green checkmark and retains the (partial)indicator.
You can click on any green checkmark site to turn it back to a red X, indicating you don't want that site trusted.
Problem.
I have a free hosted site on wordpress.com, which doesn't allow SSL (HTTPS) connections to the public, only on its admin pages. Many authors using free web sites or blogs have the same problem; no HTPPS on public pages. Sheesh.
So, can I use the Gumroad service on a free hosted site like wordpress.com if my browser has HTTPS Everywhere?
Good question, Ted. I've emailed Gumroad and asked them that question. I'm awaiting their reply and will let you know here.
UPDATE FROM GUMROAD.
Gumroad replied to my email, quite quickly too, saying "It should work."
THE REALLY GREAT NEWS.
I signed up with gumroad and uploaded my first product, Spanish Word Search Puzzles, 50 full-page puzzles for 99 cents in PDF format.
It took about 10 minutes to get published on Gumroad. 1) I altered an existing MSWord doc so the Copyright stuff had 'gumroad' instead of Smashwords, created a PDF of it, uploaded PDF file to gumroad, added description, price, and cover. Then published it on gumroad. Pretty painless and quick.
I don't expect many sales for a while until more promotion is done for my ebooks. But I have a link on my free wordpress blog (linked picture to gumroad purchase ebook page) and a new header indicating viewers may now buy direct from me.
I also created a new blog post which has the gumroad code for opening the sale page. I inserted the code at the top of the page, code easily available beside each product on gumroad, using the html codes for code.
To insert code in Wordpress click on the text tab, next to the visual tab in your editor page, and then on the <code> button. Copy/paste code from Gumroad next to the code symbol in your page, then click on the code button again to insert a closing code statement </code>.
You can see what I did on my blog page here.
Summary: Gumroad seems to play nice with Firefox and the HTTPS Everywhere extension, so that is another no-cost way to offer your works to the public at absolutely zero cost upfront.
For authors having their own paid blog or web site you can see if the site already uses HTTPS by simply looking at the URL for your site. If not, most hosting services have a shared SSL you can purchase for a small yearly fee, but I don't know if a shared SSL will work with gumroad. Or use my method of HTTPS Everywhere and post a note on your blog.
More information on Gumroad guide to selling digital products. Gumroad - How to sell ebooks. Tools for formating your ebook.
More information on HTTPS Everywhere, and you can download it for Firefox or Chrome browsers there too.
Selling directly.
If you have a website, the Gumroad overlay lets you add our purchase flow directly into your site. This lets you own the entire purchase process, instead of having to direct your customers off of your site to complete the transaction. The lower friction also leads to skyrocketing conversion.
Getting Paid.
Gumroad gets you paid every other Friday, for all sales up until the previous Friday. For example, you will be paid on the 14th for all sales up until the 7th.
If you choose to be paid through Direct Deposit (ACH) or PayPal, you'll get paid as long as you have a balance pending of $10. The minimum balance required for Zengin payouts is $100. We cover all fees for both payout options, regardless of country.
Sales Tax.
Do I have to collect taxes?
Possibly. If you are in the United States, you must collect and pay sales tax when you have nexus, or sufficient physical presence, in a state.
A company's physical presence can be permanent: corporate headquarters in Tucson. Or a company's physical presence can be temporary: a traveling salesman meeting customers in Phoenix. In both cases, the company would be subject to Arizona state sales tax.
Only a tax professional can help you determine where and when you are subject to tax, but a good rule of thumb is the state(s) where you live and work.
In other parts of the world, you may also have to pay VAT (value added tax).
For certain countries (United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain), Gumroad lets you limit purchases to just that country. This helps if you’re not sure about tax laws beyond your borders.
NOTE by Ted: For those with a legal or accounting background will find this link to the IRS valuable in regards to Intangible Personal Property. Years ago I 'licensed' copyright to my publications. The sale of one of my ebooks did NOT include any rights other than the right to read and print for personal use and specified the ebook was NOT being sold but instead licensed under the terms within. Revenue Canada assured me I did NOT have to collect or charge for GST as I was licencing an Intangible Personal Property and not selling it. Residents of other countries, the US and the UK for example, may want to check laws regarding tax on licencing IPP's.
The catch. There's always a catch.
Buying something on the net always requires an SSL connection, the HTPPS// you see in all secure URL's. An SSL certificate costs money. Even Godaddy charges $75/year for an SSL certificate.
Gumroad requires an SSL connection, the old HTTPS you see on all secure sites. Yup. You have to pay to play. Or do you?
ME? I'm frugal. I don't want to have to buy an SSL certificate.
Some friends may even say I'm cheap. I use a free SSL conversion method in my FireFox browser to ALWAYS have an SSL connection on ALMOST ANY site. Chrome users also have the ability, but not IE browsers. Chrome is very popular on many desktops, mobile phones and devices, and FireFox is the preferred browser for safe and secure Internet surfing.
The free SSL extension is called HTTPS Everywhere, and is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. HTTPS Everywhere is produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site. The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by using a clever technology to rewrite requests to these sites to HTTPS.
Security
HTTPS Everywhere icon on your browser has a popup window you can activate when you visit a standard HTTP web site for the first time, and in that window is a list of sites with a red X beside them indicating you haven't yet allowed HTTPS Everywhere to accept that site as trusted. To accept that site you click on the site next to the red X and it changes to a green checkmark.
The HTTPS Everywhere icon is located on the right side of your browser (in mine it is, yours may be different) with a number beside it indicating the number of sites you've approved for HTTPS Everywhere. Some have a red X next to the name of a site - with "(disabled)" beside it - such as doubleclick.net.
Some sites have "(partial)" next to its name, and may have an X or a checkmark.
Visiting a standard HTTP site for the first time usually displays a red X with (partial) and sometimes just a red X; the guardian newspaper site for example. Clicking on "the guardian" in the popup turns the red X to a green checkmark and retains the (partial)indicator.
You can click on any green checkmark site to turn it back to a red X, indicating you don't want that site trusted.
Problem.
I have a free hosted site on wordpress.com, which doesn't allow SSL (HTTPS) connections to the public, only on its admin pages. Many authors using free web sites or blogs have the same problem; no HTPPS on public pages. Sheesh.
So, can I use the Gumroad service on a free hosted site like wordpress.com if my browser has HTTPS Everywhere?
Good question, Ted. I've emailed Gumroad and asked them that question. I'm awaiting their reply and will let you know here.
UPDATE FROM GUMROAD.
Gumroad replied to my email, quite quickly too, saying "It should work."
THE REALLY GREAT NEWS.
I signed up with gumroad and uploaded my first product, Spanish Word Search Puzzles, 50 full-page puzzles for 99 cents in PDF format.
It took about 10 minutes to get published on Gumroad. 1) I altered an existing MSWord doc so the Copyright stuff had 'gumroad' instead of Smashwords, created a PDF of it, uploaded PDF file to gumroad, added description, price, and cover. Then published it on gumroad. Pretty painless and quick.
I don't expect many sales for a while until more promotion is done for my ebooks. But I have a link on my free wordpress blog (linked picture to gumroad purchase ebook page) and a new header indicating viewers may now buy direct from me.
I also created a new blog post which has the gumroad code for opening the sale page. I inserted the code at the top of the page, code easily available beside each product on gumroad, using the html codes for code.
To insert code in Wordpress click on the text tab, next to the visual tab in your editor page, and then on the <code> button. Copy/paste code from Gumroad next to the code symbol in your page, then click on the code button again to insert a closing code statement </code>.
You can see what I did on my blog page here.
Summary: Gumroad seems to play nice with Firefox and the HTTPS Everywhere extension, so that is another no-cost way to offer your works to the public at absolutely zero cost upfront.
For authors having their own paid blog or web site you can see if the site already uses HTTPS by simply looking at the URL for your site. If not, most hosting services have a shared SSL you can purchase for a small yearly fee, but I don't know if a shared SSL will work with gumroad. Or use my method of HTTPS Everywhere and post a note on your blog.
More information on Gumroad guide to selling digital products. Gumroad - How to sell ebooks. Tools for formating your ebook.
More information on HTTPS Everywhere, and you can download it for Firefox or Chrome browsers there too.