Internet Shopping cart for Selling downloads

Apart from the fact that your frozen fish product might actually have unfrozen on the way to the customer (causing its own problem), you also sit with the problem of having to package the fish, print a paper invoice and packing slip, physically transport it to some postal service, and then actually having to pay postage for it to be shipped.

In comparison to that, selling an electronically downloadable product is laughably easy.

Let's look at the advantages.

Because there is no physical product -

1. You do not need to keep stock on hand. This is a tremendous cost saving and means that there is an easy entry into the world of trading online.

2. There are no transport costs and postage costs to pay.

3. You do not need to be concerned with the logistics and manpower involved in having to package the product and transport it, nor have to be concerned with paper invoices and packing slips.

4. The whole process of selling online can be automated - down to the actual generation of invoices and delivery of the product.

5. The product is immediately available to the customer for consumption. No waiting for something to arrive through the post. This is a big advantage in this age of instant gratification!

6. Electronic products such as eBooks, audio eBooks, video and music are really in demand and you will therefore have a hot market hungry for your products.

There are disadvantages to selling electronic products though - let's look at some of these.

1. Although it is easy to create an electronic product and sell it, it is just as easy to duplicate the same product. This cannot happen with a physical product! This means that your product, unless protected by some licensing mechanism to prevent unauthorized use, can easily lose its value due to the fact that it is very easy for the product to be copied and transferred between various people via electronic means.

2. Although you do get the problem of returns with a physical product, at least you have the consolation that once the product is returned it cannot be used any more by the purchaser. With an electronic product, the customer can buy the electronic product and still demand a refund. Because there is no physical product to return, he can keep on using the product while getting his money back. If you set up an online store selling digital products, you will have to build in some overhead for returns into your pricing structure.

3. Remember also that if you sell a downloadable product you need to protect your download link so that unscrupulous shoppers don’t share the direct download link and cause you to loose sales.

Despite these drawbacks, selling downloadable products is absolutely the best way to go if you want to enter the exciting world of ecommerce. Just make sure you find a good shopping cart that supports selling electronic downloads!