Chris Stelzer wrote:Hey Ernie,
You have some options. I think your best option is Paypal. All you have to do is set up an account with them. You put a button on your website for each product, and it will direct them to the Paypal website. Paypal takes a commission on each purchase, but it's low. You do need a website in order to put the Paypal button on it. Do you have one? You could make one, with hosting for about $4/month, plus $12 to buy a domain name, for a grand total of $16!!! If you need help on the specifics I could help you.
Chris
Thanks Chris - and everybody! Looks like Jesus posted a similar starting point within the same minute.
We have two domain names, I got both of them through Google at different times:
http://www.ErnieAndErica.info is already up on the web, and working pretty well, hosted through Google Sites.
But I'm having trouble getting www.ErnieAndErica.com set up, though I purchased it through the same process. When I attempt to run through Google's series of 'get started' screens, one of the pages just freezes. I've worked around it using a different page I can access once logged in, to set up a basic website, but it seems it's only viewable to people signed in as members of ernieanderica.com, not to the general public, despite changing the setting to 'public'. So that is pretty useless to us.
We had intended to use ErnieAndErica.com as the site for sales, etc, leaving our free info on the .info site.
I believe the PayPal buttons are supposed to work within the Google Sites restrictions, and we could try setting them up on our already-working site at ernieanderica.info. But I'm seriously considering finding another host and/or paying a little bit for technical support to get away from these glitches. Like Ernie said, we just don't know enough. The problem may be us rather than the host, and it would be frustrating to pay more and still not be able to set anything up.
Cameron, Kane, Yacoube, Ronen -
Thanks for your tips on e-book sales. Paul said something similar during his visit, about people seem to like Kindle for self-publishing.
In my mind building plans seem to be a little different from e-books; though maybe we can sell them the same way. In the building industry you find plans for anywhere from $45 to $1000's of dollars, even more for a custom engineer or architect's plans. These are off-the-shelf, fully detailed plan for complex projects like boats or masonry
heaters, or the ASTM standard or building code that applies to such things. Our plans are intended for that market niche: they include a lot of scale drawings like a blueprint, plus design and building instructions that can run to 16 pages or more. The larger-format plans are multi-page documents that print on 11x17" paper. Not quite a book, but still a lot of detail, and I'm using a book- or zine-type publishing program to do the graphic layout. They're formatted so buyers can print a copy or two for personal use: probably at a copy shop or library or on a big office printer, but no need for an expensive architectural plotter. I envision the plans and diagrams being shared with co-owners, taken to meetings, tacked up on the wall of the building site, and blown up to create scale templates for specific parts of the project.
It sounds like it might be well worth our while to also offer e-books (these same plans, or other instructional content that's more book-like) through existing sellers. I imagine e-books to be something people read on the bus, or while researching a project, not something you'd take out on a muddy building site for quick reference.
It does take a fair amount of time to work the information into a printable format, so I'd love to get what I already have up and selling while I keep working on additional units for sale.
Kane and Luke - thanks for the links, I am loading them to peruse. Those sound like good resources.
Dale - Thanks for the 'customer comment.' At present I have been offering our first purchasers a discount plus a commitment to send them any improved versions we might make in the first year. It sounds like a bit of work to email people about updates, but maybe there's a tool out there where customers 'subscribe' to a page and get automatic updates if we change something. That would be a pretty cool feature.
Brice - Yeah, I don't think it's possible to completely prevent theft using electronic document security. Going to all-paper sales seems like thowing the baby out with the bathwater. But maybe it is worth arranging to sell some physical versions for more, as you say, if only to support folks that are homesteading with limited internet access.
Some people just seem to believe that if it's easy to steal the info electronically, it's not a crime like it would be if you had to actually walk into my house and take a copy from my closet. This seems to be a particular problem among youth who have been entertaining themselves electronically while going to school, and they get used to the idea that it's their 'job' to learn things and not a privilege that they should respect or pay for. And then they get released like crippled butterflies and have to earn money for things that they are accustomed to being force-fed for free. I think they somehow associate 'providers of information' with 'the establishment,' and ripping us off is some kind of outlet for their frustration with their parents or schooling.
Most people we deal with do seem to outgrow this attitude. We recognize that we are responsible for building the world we wish to live in, and that means reciprocating when others help us. Offering gas money when you hitchhike, or borrow a car; that kind of basic courtesy keeps others willing to trust and help each other. Most people who are thinking of building an earthen masonry project have a work ethic, many own property they've had to pay for somehow, and most realize that stealing the plans would be an abuse of trust that ultimately leads to a tragedy of the commons. Not everyone can afford to pay cash for everything they want, but honorable people usually offer something in exchange. Our lives are richer for the dried
nettles, buckskin, tomatoes, and alternative healing treatments we've received, as well as the cash contributions that let us travel and pay the Internet bill.
We do offer a lot of free information to help others get started experimenting on their own. The best form of reciprocity for this is sharing your own information - post project pictures, blog and cite us, email us about your project, write a testimonial we can post on our website, tell people how excited you are.
And then we also offer these carefully-prepared professional documents that are specifically geared to save an owner or contractor time and money (using skills we paid in similar coin to acquire, like my college education and Ernie's industrial training and years at
Cob Cottage Co.). We ask money for these things, because they are designed to be valuable within the money economy: permit inspectors, weekend projects, hourly labor rates.
Ultimately, thieves and freeloaders don't make good clients. I don't suppose we are going to get any money from the parasites even if we
beef up security. It feels like it's not worth spending a lot of effort on either stopping or accommodating them.
Straw poll: Do you pay money for a book, if you can find it online for free?
My own first preferences are to use freely offered information, to buy directly from authors or
local bookstores, or to use shared subscriptions at the local library. There are plenty of legal ways to get free information. I am wary of 'free' downloads / pirated material, that might be virus-bait or get me associated with someone else's copyright lawsuit. I generally ask authors' permissions and cite my sources in our presentations. I research through free info online, but I don't try to hack their sales pages. I think most of our customers are like me, and I'd rather cater to this level of responsibility.
I think a fair number of people recognize that as you spend your time and money, so grows your world, and it's degrading to buy only tampons and
gasoline and let everybody else whistle for their living.
So my preference would be to go on the honor system, making it clear how we want our copyright to be respected, and then making it easy for legitimate customers to enjoy their purchases conveniently. We could take legal action to protect our copyright if someone tries to re-sell our creative property, but I hope we don't have to. It's like having the lunch lady watch the door, rather than padlocking the snack cart.
This 'choose-your-own-ethics' approach to security would allow us to locate the files on a particular server, and provide the links only to those who have purchased the product. Then people like Dale could go back with the same link, and download it again if they lost the file or if we updated it. If we have a problem with the links getting re-sold or published, we could go to a login system if necessary.
I'm almost tempted to sell a simple 'Ernie and Erica Membership" where you get access to ALL our published plans, and we don't have to mind the store.
Is this naive? If we take a middle road on document security, are we leaving ourselves open to some massive failures of a kind I'm not seeing? Or is this middle road a practical choice, given our skills, lower budget, and the general decency of our customer base?
(Payment security is something we do take much more seriously; we will be using a trusted service to handle transactions).
I'd particularly appreciate the opinions of the website professionals who've done us the favor of contributing, since this seems like a common problem that your clients would need to resolve according to their own judgment or yours.
In case it isn't obvious, we are way more into the research and teaching, than we are into the commerce aspect of this business.
So: next steps - try the PayPal button on ErnieAndErica.info. Read up on other options.
Look into moving ErnieAndErica.com somewhere more user-friendly, where we can serve PDF's and/or login membership links.
Please keep the advice coming. We will have a little cash to spend on this the first of the month, or can offer a greater value in professional services for trade.
-Erica