[Blog Start - Software Channels]

Today, I open my blog to one of our merchants – Adam Gussow:

When Ralf informed me last week that my self-released digital download, “Satan and Adam:  WORD ON THE STREET,” had been the #1 music download at Tradebit for the last reporting period, I couldn’t have been happier.  The truth is, Tradebit has turned out to be a remarkable resource for me.

Here are the facts:

• In late February 2007, on a whim, I began uploading blues harmonica tutorials to YouTube.  (In my former life, I was a professional blues harp performer and teacher.)  After I’d uploaded 40 videos in 40 days, people told me they wanted to send me money as thanks for my generosity.

• In early April, responding to this opportunity, I created a website called Modern Blues Harmonica (www.modernbluesharmonica.com), using Mac Website Builder, and linked it to Tradebit and PayPal.  I created a handful of new video tutorials and tab sheets, uploaded them to Tradebit, and made them available for download at a modest price ($5 per video, $2 per tab), with all payments sent through PayPal.

• I was profitable to the tune of several hundred dollars that very first week.

• Thanks to strong international as well as domestic sales and low fees, I have been profitable every single week since then.  I’ve sold thousands of files to something like 800 individual purchasers.  My poorest week, after sales, has netted me almost $200 and I’ve had many weeks that double and occasionally triple that.  That’s net, after all fees have been paid.

• Like other vendors, I bristled a little at Tradebit’s changeover from a fee-based to a commission-based system.  But the truth is, Ralf and his crew responded rapidly to my suggestion for an increased information flow after the changeover, and last week was my highest sales week so far, net after all fees.  How can I complain?  I can’t.  Business is great!

In short, I have created a viable part-time web business with Tradebit’s help.  I admire so many aspects of Tradebit’s system that I can’t list them all.  The upload process is trouble-free, the preview function is a huge help in convincing customers to take the plunge, and the accounting system now rivals PayPal’s.  Plus I am convinced that the folks at Tradebit are always willing to innovate for the sake of further optimization.  I’m in for the long haul.

Here are a couple of links, for those of you who are curious about my operation:  one to last week’s best-selling download (an album by the duo that I’m part of), one to “the store” on my website that I’ve linked in a creative way to Tradebit, and one to my homepage.

1. Satan and Adam:  WORD ON THE STREET
2. “THE STORE”
3. MODERN BLUES HARMONICA

Here’s the most important thing:  When I first began this adventure in April of last year, I had ZERO experience as a web developer.  I considered myself a web illiterate, in fact.  I simply knew — and I mean KNEW — that if I could find a way of uploading and selling blues harmonica video tutorials for instant download, at a modest cost and using PayPal as the method of payment, I would have a viable business.  Knowing absolutely nothing about the whole webhosting world, I went to Google and put in “sell files.”  Tradebit came up first.  The rest is history.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 7:15 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.