Do you have a digital product idea that you would like to sell online? About eight months ago, I did too. This article summarizes my experience selling online.

 While I already have a traditionally published book (GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design), I wanted to complement it with some short e-books that would simplify a GIS professional’s job by making it much easier to choose colors and typography for maps. Because they would be short and electronic-only, I decided to go with the self-publishing route for these e-books. How did I do it? The short answer is that I hired someone to design and implement the web ordering and fulfillment interfaces.

While I highly recommend having a web professional take care of these steps so that you can focus on the product, you will still want to know a little bit about how these things work. The first step is to choose a shopping cart provider that can interface with online payment providers and also deal with order fulfillment. My web designer chose E-Junkie, which though it is a terrible name, is really a great service for shopping carts that work well with PayPal and Google Checkout. With E-Junkie you first have to have accounts with PayPal and Google Checkout, then you can set up E-Junkie. There are other shopping cart providers that you might want to consider as well. Look at the list of options in your Google Checkout, Tools, Integration Partners.

You’ll want something that can handle the fulfillment process with ease but also provide you with lists of purchasers and an ability to send out automatic updates to prior purchasers, which is something I had to do recently. You might also be interested in a cart that can handle coupon codes. Once this is all set up it is going to be completely up to you to get the word out about the product.

One thing that a traditional publisher will do that you will have to do yourself is to really scrutinize the idea from all angles in order to determine its viability in the marketplace. Do you have a platform from which you can market the product? How many do you expect to sell? This can be a tough number to come up with if you’ve never tried to sell a product online before. A blogger I know, who has a widely read blog and created a self-published, full-length book to complement the material on the blog, has sold over 2,000 copies of the book in six months. That is a huge success. However, this blogger already had a very large following, was well trusted, and is known for high quality work. If you don’t have a large platform, though, do not despair as there are still many reasons to give it a try.

My two booklets, Colors For Maps and Type For Maps (you can preview them here), I would consider a success even though I have not sold thousands of them. I’m relying mostly on word-of-mouth marketing since I have my “regular” work to keep me busy. I’ve been fortunate to have several people helping me in this regard. A cartography workshop teacher, for example, has printed the booklets out and sent them around his classes. Even if selling online does not become a path to sure riches for you, there are still many reasons that it can be a worthwhile pursuit. First, any time you write a book, even if you feel like you know the subject material, you learn a lot. I am so much more an expert on color and typography now that I have put together the booklets. Second, you can use your product yourself. I have the two booklets to use in my own cartography work, and it just so happens that they are exactly what I have always wanted to have on-hand when designing a map. Third, you are contributing to the profession. I feel good providing these materials to others and hopefully making their professional lives a little easier and I am sure you will too once your product hits the online shelves!

Colors For Maps is a 40 page booklet in PDF format that contains 30 color palettes specifically chosen for mapping projects

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