KarmaSites

Preparing for Digital Sales

There are a few things you need to do in preparation before you can sell individual tracks on your website:

1. You must have a PayPal account, and it must be either a "premier" or "business" class account. If you have a "personal" account, you will need to upgrade:
   1. Log in to your PayPal account.
   2. Click the "Upgrade Account" link in the "Enhance Account" box. (If you do not see this link, you already have a premier or business account.)
   3. Click "Upgrade Now".
   4. Choose a Business or Premier account. (If you do not know which one you want, select Premier.)
   5. Click Continue.
   6. If you chose to upgrade to a Business account, fill in your business information and click Continue.
   7. You have now upgraded your account.
2. Make sure your PayPal account is configured to accept credit cards from people who don't have PayPal accounts:
   1. Log into PayPal and click the "My Account" tab.
   2. Click "Profile" on the far right of the secondary tabs.
   3. Click "Website Payment Preferences" from the "Selling Preferences" section.
   4. Scroll down near the bottom of the page to find "PayPal Account Optional". Set it to "On".
3. Make sure you are not blocking people who do not provide a confirmed addresses:
   1. Log into PayPal and click the "My Account" tab.
   2. Click "Profile" on the far right of the secondary tabs.
   3. About halfway down the last column of links, select "Payment Receiving Preferences".
   4. Look for the option that starts with, "Block payments from U.S. users who...". It must be set to "No".
      1. If this option is already set to "No", just back out from this screen.
      2. If this option is set to "Yes", set it to "No" and then click "Save" at the bottom of the screen.
4. Enocode your high-quality MP3s. Encode them with a bitrate of 192kbps, and enable "VBR" (variable bitrate) encoding if your encoder supports it. This is a good balance between file size and quality, and is 50% higher quality than most mainstream digital downloads (e.g. iTunes). (Note: Larger files will cut into your profits because they take more disk space and use more bandwidth to download. For this reason you should start with 192kbps and only increase the bitrate if there is a demand.)
5. Reconsider what you are offering for free on your site. You definitely want to offer a clip or low-quality sample of every track you are selling, because people aren't going to buy a track they haven't had a chance to hear. However, you probably don't want offer the full song at CD-quality (128kbps) because that reduces the incentive to buy. Instead, either reduce the quality to 96kbps or just offer half the song at 112kbps.

Enable Digital Sales on Your Site:

1. Go to your Admin Area and log in to CMS.
2. Go into the Music Preferences
3. Expand the "Digital Sales" section and enter the PayPal email address that you are using for digital sales.

Upload Your Files:

1. Go to your Admin Area and log in to CMS.
2. Go to your Albums section, then select [Tracks] next to the album you are going to upload files for.
3. You will see your list of tracks for this album. Next to the first track that you are going to upload, select [Edit]
4. Midway down the page you will see the fields for Digital Sales. Set the Digital Sales option to "Yes", set a price, and upload your high-quality file in the field provided.
5. Repeat as necessary until you have uploaded all of the files that you will be selling.

Enabling and Testing Downloadable Files

Do Not Skip This Section. As soon as you upload your first paid download track, you should run some tests. Go buy a track from yourself, and make sure the transaction processes smoothly, that you get the confirmation emails, and that you can log in and download your music.

Note: You will need to use a separate PayPal account for testing, because PayPal will not allow you to buy something from yourself. If you don't have a second PayPal account, ask a friend to make a purchase from you.

Once you are convinced everything is working properly, you can then continue putting up more tracks for sale.