It’s easy to set up and sell digital files on ezFolk -- not just MP3 files, but virtually any other type of file as well such as videos (AVI, WMV, MPG, etc.), and other files such as PDF, DOC, ZIP, JPG, and more. You can even sell advance tickets to upcoming gigs! Pretty much any file that can be uploaded and downloaded can be offered for sale. Of course, they must be your own files and cannot infringe on the copyrights of others.

When selling your digital items, you are not paid directly (as in the Store section), but instead, all payments go into the ezFolk PayPal account. When your earnings reach $10.00, then you will be paid directly by us through PayPal. A detailed breakdown of all your sales is available in your Statistics section.

You receive 80% of the net earnings after the PayPal charges and you can set your own prices. We are set up for Micro Payments through PayPal so on small purchases such as individual MP3s the rates are much better than for a normal account.

Here's how it breaks down on the purchase of an MP3 for 99 cents:

• .99 -- Selling Price
• .10 -- PayPal Charges
• .18 -- ezFolk Charges (20% of Net after PayPal Charges)
• .71 -- Amount You Receive (80% of Net after PayPal Charges)

Below is an explanation of how you can set up your digital sales.

The digital items for sale are referred to as “vault” items and are only accessible to those customers who unlock the vault by paying for them.

There are two ways to create a new vault item: (1) through the “Modify Song” menu, or (2) by clicking on “Create Item” under the Vault submenu.

If you want to sell the MP3 for a song that is already uploaded you can add the MP3 for sale through the “Modify Song” menu. Choose the song, then at the bottom of the menu you will see the vault form where you can enter your info, which looks like this:

New Vault File: Even though you already have an MP3 loaded you will need to upload another for the vault. It can be the same one, or if you want the one you sell to be a higher quality then you would upload the higher quality MP3 as the vault file. For example, maybe you’re using a 128 kbps MP3 for streaming but are offering a 320 kbps CD-quality MP3 for sale. Be sure to say that in the description.

Item Description: Describe what is for sale and, as mentioned above, be sure to let your listeners know if the file is different than the one they’re streaming.

Item Price (USD): Set the price for your item (in US dollars). A good MP3 price is 99 cents (enter it as .99) but you can pick your price although there is a minimum of 50 cents.

Item Sales Limit: Unless for some reason you want to limit sales, just leave this as is.

Hide Vault Entry: If you would like to suspend sales of an item temporarily you can check this box and it won’t show up. When you’re ready to sell it again just unclick the box and it will reappear. An example of when you might use this would be if you have Christmas music, during the Christmas season you might make your Christmas songs available but hide them after Christmas until the next season, and they’ll be ready for you without needing to set them up again.

Important: Be sure after making your changes you click on “Modify Song” at the bottom of the page to save the changes.

The other method of adding a new vault item involves just adding it directly to the vault by clicking on “Create Item” under the Vault submenu on the left side of your control panel. Add items in this way that you are not offering for free streaming. For instance, maybe you would like to offer all 12 songs for sale as downloads but only want to offer 3 or 4 for free streaming. Those 3 or 4 for streaming can be added with the method above, and the ones only available for download can be entered by adding them directly to the vault as described below.

Click on the “Create Item” button under the Vault submenu and this form will appear:

Simply fill in the form and be sure to click on “Create Item” and your new vault item will appear in your store or vault.

Important: As I write this (October 2007) the only theme that supports all of the features below is the “Flashback” theme, so if you’re using one of the others you might want to consider switching to “Flashback” instead. Switching themes is simple: just click on “Site Themes” under the “Your Site” submenu on your control panel and make your choice.

Here are some sample screenshots of how your digital items will show up on ezFolk.

A “Buy Now” button appears on your flash MP3 player and also the flash video player (Flashback theme only). Listeners can click here to add the song to their shopping cart.

Clicking on the “Buy Now” button above adds the song to the listener’s shopping cart. The customer does not need to be signed in to ezFolk and does not need to have an ezFolk account. When they pay through PayPal, if they have an ezFolk (either Artist or Listener) account associated with the email address, then the digital files will be transferred to their account. If they don’t have an account, a temporary account is set up during the purchase process.

The customer has the option of checking out, clearing the cart, or continuing to shop. The shopping cart can be filled with items from different artists, as in the following illustration.

When they are through shopping, the customer can click on “Checkout” to finalize the sale.

After the purchase, the items are downloadable under “Your Files” in their control panel. As explained above, if the customer does not have an ezFolk account a temporary one is created for them.

There are other places on the site that your digital items will show up for sale as well. On the main menu, at the bottom of the menu is “Digital Downloads,” which contains a list of all of the digital items for sale.

Also, in your personal artist section, the yellow info buttons mean that a download is for sale (Flashback theme only).

If a listener clicks on the yellow info button, the listing expands to include the additional information on how to purchase it.

If you have additional questions about the digital vault or any other features, feel free to leave a message in the ezFolk Forums.