Getting your file to the right place when you have a downloadable product can be hard, and it only gets worse if you are selling them. Then you have to worry about protecting your download and delivering them at the time of sale.

Enter BitBuffet.com

BitBuffet wants to make selling downloadable products 1-2-3 easy. We've outlined the steps below:

1. Sign Up and Connect to PayPal

We offer a free 7-day trial (no credit card required), so signing up is a snap. Connecting to PayPal is just as easy because once you signup, we have a step-by-step guide with screenshots to get you connected to PayPal in less than 5 minutes.

2. Upload You File and Set Your Price

Got a zip file? Howabout a Word doc? Or maybe an mp3? It doesn't matter at all! Just add a new product, set your price, and select your file. That's it. You are ready to sell!

3. Place Your Buy Now Button and Start Collecting Money

We give you the simple HTML, just paste it to your site and away you go! The money is deposited to your account so you never have to worry about waiting for a payout. It's simple!

Give us a spin! You'll like us!

Why not hop on our demo account by using the username "demo" and the password "abc123" and give us a spin? I am sure you'll be surprised! Then, head over to the and sign up for a free trial. We never ask for a credit card and you control everything 100% in PayPal.

A new feature has just been added, the ability to set your currency on a per-product basis! This will allow you to sell some files in one currency and other files in another currency, or any wild mix you can come up with!

This is completely backwards compatible. IE: If you don't set your currency on a product, we default to the account wide setting, just like before!

We all are aware of the popular eBay or Clickbank like marketplaces for Wordpress themes, but they also take a lot of money from a sale! Sometimes this can be over 50%! That's a lot of money you could be making instead of them. So we at BitBuffet have created a different way to sell downloadable goods like Wordpress templates.

We make it easy as 1, 2, 3.

Chances are you already have a PayPal account. That was step one. The next step is to sign up for a free trial for BitBuffet and follow the setup directions (this should take about 5 minutes). Finally, just upload your zipped theme and get your button code for your site!

That's all it takes, because anyone who clicks the "Buy Now" button will be redirected to a PayPal payment page and upon completion of a payment, we'll send out a thank you email with a direct download link, automatically. No matter where you are (sleeping, in the shower, at the gym...) BitBuffet is always working for you, delivering files to happy customers.

Try us out.

Why not hop on our demo account by using the username "demo" and the password "abc123" and give us a spin? I am sure you'll be surprised! Then, head over to the and sign up for a free trial. We never ask for a credit card and you control everything 100% in PayPal.

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who called in to alert us to the fact that a section of our site wasn't functioning properly! Everything should be functioning fine now.

The outage happened from around 2am last night to about 9am this morning and only affected the add and edit product page, as well as the download settings page. All downloads were recorded as usual.

We'll keep you abreast of any new developments!

There are tons of clunky solutions that try to tie the functionality of delivering downloads to PayPal. We aren't one of them because we are the only elegant solution to delivering instant downloads after a PayPal payment.

Our method is simple: we never touch your money, and your users are sent to a plain-jane PayPal payment page where they pay YOU. All we do is get a notification from PayPal about who bought your file and deliver it to the appropriate customer with a specialized download link sent directly (and instantly!) to their inbox.

Bringing Simple Instant Downloads to the PayPal Community

The traditional, and rather difficult, method of selling files was to hand-deliver by email attachment the purchased file to the customer after the sale was made. However, this is a pain. Imagine being away from your computer while your customers are waiting for their file. Talk about upset customers!

We simplify this by allowing you to upload the file to sell to us, and we deliver the file on your behalf within seconds of a sale. This frees up your time to focus elsewhere and gives you a happy customer!

How do I set this up?

Once you sign up for a free 7-day trial, you are automatically redirected to our easy, step-by-step process to link your PayPal account to us. After this, just upload your file to us and place the "Buy Now" button on your website. Now, sit back and let us do the work for you! From here on out, anyone who purchases your download via our button gets instant delivery!

So, sign up for a free trial and see if you like it. You don't have to pay a dime upfront and just pack up and leave if you don't like us (though I know you will!).

So, since you are reading this, you probably have some sort of file you want to sell for download. That's great! In fact, that's half the battle. After you have your file you have two more things you should probably be worried about:

1. Finding Customers
2. Delivering the Product

While we can't solve #1 (I wish we could!), with BitBuffet, you don't have to worry about #2 because we take care of it for you. That means we link the ability to download a file to a payment. From the customers perspective: they get seamlessly redirected to a PayPal payment page and moments later they have an email in the inbox with a secure link to download the file!

From your perspective: you didn't have to lift a finger. It was all done for you automatically. In fact, the only time we even need your input is during the initial setup. We give you easy, step-by-step instructions on configuring your PayPal account to alert us about sales. Then upload your file and set a price. Then you get simple code to place a Buy Now to download link on your blog/website/Facebook/MySpace.

Not sure? Start a free 7-day trial today!

We don't ask you for your credit card and if you don't like us, don't use us! We won't ever spam you or allow anyone to access your secure files unless they pay first. Click here to start your trial!

The web is a wonderful place. You can find or buy nearly anything your heart desires. However, only the truly lucky know that you can sell almost anything as well! We've seen lots of stuff sell that we would have never guessed a market existed for it. One of the more interesting areas is documents.

Selling Information via Documents

The inherent beauty of selling documents is their ability to transfer information. It doesn't matter if you are selling directions to build a parabolic sun tracking solar charger for your laptop or selling information on how to write and design your own programming language. In the eyes of the internet (and BitBuffet), it's all data and can be sent and received as such.

In fact, the most popular format by far is PDF's, although we often see Word and Excel documents popping up here and here as well as scanned images. PDF's make it easy to open and view documents without any hassle worrying about fonts or layout: everyone sees what you see.

How does it work?

It's a simple process that we employ. We take your files and place them on a secure server. We then make sure your PayPal account is communicating with BitBuffet. All you have to do now is place the button on your website and wait for the sales to roll in! Once we get a notification from PayPal that there was a sale, we send off an email with a custom, one-time (or three-time) download link that expires after a few days.

What's the alternative?

An alternative is emailing the files one-by-one for each sale. This can be a hassle because of the need to always be working and ready to send an email otherwise you risk upset customers because their download link or email was late! With BitBuffet, we automate this and send out the email instantly.

A lot of people ask me what happens to their files once they are uploaded to BitBuffet, so allow me to illuminate this subject. The short answer is: we host several copies securely. The long answer, is well, longer and a little more complicated, naturally!

Your Files, Secure

First, we take your files and calculate the calculate a hash for a unique naming convention. That way we never have to worry about your file getting overwritten or deleted on accident. Next, we place it in a folder structure based on the date. Now the important thing to know about this folder is it's explicitly blocked from normal surfers (and those like Google). So even if you knew the exact path AND the hash, you couldn't access the file if you wanted to!

Usually, if your file is small (think under 5 megs), we keep it on our server. While those files do get backed up with the rest of the site bi-weekly to Amazon's S3 service, we don't host the files for download from S3. Instead, we use a powerful Apache module called "x-sendfile" to permit only one time authorized downloads issued by an internal mechanism. Basically, no one downloads these files unless we let them.

On the other hand, if your file is large (think over 5 megs), we move them to Amazon's S3 service for faster access (and more redundant storage). While S3 is usually thought of as a plain-Jane CDN, it actually has some really powerful access settings. Basically, we block all access and then generate one-time, expiring URLs to access the file. These URL's are only good for about 60 seconds, but we may generate another URL depending on your download settings.

What happens if I quit BitBuffet?

Usually, we keep the files and data around for a couple weeks, just in case you decide to come back and get your old information and files. After that, we usually clean house by deleting the information. We will never sell your info or use your files elsewhere (we don't own them, you do!).

Feel free to contact us with any further questions via our contact page or our toll-free telephone line!

A large problem almost everyone who sells files online has to deal with is the threat of someone leaking your thank you page or download link. In fact, you can pretty much kill your chances of selling a product if a forum post with your unprotected download link is just a Google away... Instead, you have a couple of options when protecting your downloads and we'll cover them all from worst to best.

Change the URL!

This one is decidedly low-tech. You simply adjust the URL to the thank you page and download page (as well as the link to the file) and make sure to send out the new URL form now on. This works fairly well except its a pain in the butt and it doesn't fix the hole, it just moves it! However, this is most definitely the easiest to set up (even though its the hardest to maintain!).

Email the file!

This means the file doesn't even sit on a URL and only exists on your own personal hard drive. When someone buys your digital product, you simply attach the file to an email and toss it off. This works great if you don't have many sales, the file is really small, you have lots of time to personally email each customer, and don't have customers that demand instant access. However, if even one of those requirements aren't met, keep looking!

Create a script!

This one is actually rather clever, as long as you know how to program. Create a script that gathers your PayPal IPN and sends off an email containing a custom, one time use URL for downloading the file. Don't forget to not link directly to the file but to route it through the script in memory (and deny the download if the IPN or customer URL wasn't valid). Not the easiest in the world, but it works!

Use BitBuffet!

This one is my favorite (how original of me). I've designed BitBuffet to be simple and easy to use. Just set up your PayPal account and upload your file. That's it! It's like we created a script for you and then hosted they file for you as well. Never worry about missing an email as that's done automatically and instantly, and never worry about changing an URLs or someone sharing the download link.

Not sure if you really want to use BitBuffet? Why not just sign up for a free trial and see if you like it? You don't have to pay a dime upfront and just pack up and leave if you don't like us (though I know you will!).

Tonight we're moving the server into a new, more secure location with a more recent and modern software architecture. While we hope to see very little downtime or service interruptions, anything is possible. If you notice any discrepancies in services, please let us know at contact @ bitbuffet dot com or give us a call!

Expected downtime: less than 5-10 minutes at around 3:30am eastern, 2:30am central, 1:30am mountain, or 12:30am pacific.

Ever since the dawn of the internet, people have been scrambling to find a way to commercialize and profit from digital transactions. While in the early days, only the tech savvy and entrepreneurial sorts could either figure out how to make it work or had the ambition to spend hours on end working, in recent times, we've seen a huge growth in the online sphere. In fact, it is hard to forget the massive boom experienced in the late nineties and the equally as massive bust in the early 2000's.

However, with the widespread adoption of the internet and digital media consumption devices like the iPod, iPad, Kindle and company, many new avenues of revenue have been opened up to mainstream users. This includes people with domain specific knowledge but limited technical knowledge. The confusion of selling files online used to be a hindrance, but today, it is obvious that anyone can upload a file to a site and sell it.

Sell Files the Easy Way

There has never been a simpler way to sell files than BitBuffet. The process is mind-numbingly simple. Just set up your PayPal account and upload a file to BitBuffet. Set your price in BitBuffet and place the "Buy Now" button on your blog or website.

That's it. It's brilliant and simple.

We even provide stats and running totals of your sales. Not to mention a simple way to sort through and manage your current and past customers. Your files are 100% secure using industry standard software to protect your downloads. You can resend download links to customers in a heartbeat. And to top it off: we never take any of your hard earned money on a per-product basis.

A saner way to make money

Due to our adherence to the belief that your money is yours to keep, we only charge a single flat fee no matter how many millions of sales you get (we hope!). We have customer support by phone and email and are happy to help you at any time. Unlike other services that ignore or otherwise will not help, we're there almost 24/7 (hey, we gotta sleep!).

Just let us know what we can do for you! Drop us a line at contact@bitbuffet.com. Or, hop right in and and sign up for a free trial! We can't wait to hear from you!

We've helped dozens of independent musicians and game designers offer up their hard work in the form of a digital download in return for a donation. In fact, a majority of these providers offer a "pay-what-you-want" model that allow their fans and customers to pay what they can afford in return for an instant download.

Why Sell Files for Donation?

While a majority of these donations are for a minimum sum (0.01), many still are substantial payments that can make up for the lower sums. This often results in an appealing average price. In the end, not only does the content producer receive a little compensation for customers that would otherwise leave, they also get the goodwill and the patronage of future, repeat customers.

On the other side, the customer gets the product at a price they can afford. The leave happy and are likely to tell others and spread the good word about deal they got.

Win-win is a little cliche, but I believe it is appropriate.

How to get started...

Signing up for BitBuffet is a simple process, just create an account, follow the simple instructions for setting up your PayPal account and upload your file with a price of 0. We interpret the 0 as a "pay-what-you-want" sale.

After you place the button on your site, any customer that clicks through will get a box for inputting their own price. Any price at or above 0.01 goes! After they complete the sale, they get an email with a link to the file. Simple!

So, what are you waiting for? Let's do this! Sign up for a free 7-day trial!

Not too long ago I was contacted by someone who wanted to sell Excel spreadsheets and accompanying documents online. They were advanced spreadsheets for personal budgeting and were quite unique. He wanted to offer them up in zip packages and sell different sets online using PayPal. This was actually a pretty common way of doing business except he was currently emailing them out by hand one at a time! We suggested using BitBuffet and freed up his time to focus on marketing and customer support.

Using BitBuffet to Sell Excel Spreadsheets

A lot of questions we get are about how difficult it is to get set up and going with BitBuffet. It's actually a quite simple process to get up and running. Below, I'll list the steps to get from zero to hero.

1. Sign up for a PayPal Premier or Business account (it's free!)
2. Sign up for a BitBuffet.com account.
3. Follow our easy setup directions after you activate your account.
4. Zip up your Excel files and other documents (using free software like WinZip or right-click->Send-to compressed folder (zipped) in Vista or Windows 7).
5. Add your Product and set your title and price and upload your zip file.
6. Copy the button code onto your website.
7. Watch the money roll in!

It's useful to note that once you complete these steps the rest of the work is hands-free! You never have to send out emails or create download links manually again. We take care of it automatically. If a customer purchases your Excel sheet at 4:35 am on a Sunday morning, they'll get an email with a download link dispatched from the BitBuffet servers at 4:36am.

Commission Free Sales!

The glorious thing about selling with BitBuffet is that you never get hit with extra costs. You pay a flat monthly fee and keep every penny. Your money doesn't even get routed through us! You customer pays into your PayPal account and we send the link on your behalf. Never get gouged by other sellers again.

I've had a lot of questions about how BitBuffet works, and I thought I'd address some of the scripting curiosities I've received. We integrate with PayPal through IPN notifications. While PayPal offers pretty thorough documentation on the IPN process, they neglect to detail the practical application of IPN notifications. Before we go on to much further, let's cover what IPN is...

Instant Payment Notification

In short, Instant Payment Notifications (or IPNs) are PayPal's way of alerting you of a payment. Basically, you give them a notification URL that they ping with some post data about the recent payment containing the amount, emails, names and fees involved. You can take the data from the URL and use it to trigger all kinds of things, including dispatching an email containing a file, or sending a link to that file.

Gathering the IPN

Gathering an IPN is as simple as making a script that checks the request for any variety of POST data. Some of the more useful ones are "payer_email", "mc_gross", "invoice" and "custom". The variable "payer_email" naturally contains the email of the payer. "mc_gross" contains the amount of money sent including PayPal fees and everything. Both "invoice" and "custom" are pass through variables that are set by the button (the form submitted to PayPal detailing the payment).

I often use "custom" to identify the specific product being purchased and "invoice" as a variable that contains the date and other information. Once you gather this information, its just a matter of tossing it off to another script or triggering an action. For example, maybe we want to save the sale in a database and dispatch an email with a link to a protected download. We'll discuss techniques for that in the next section.

Using IPN to Initiate a Protected Download

After you store the sale in a database of some sort, you'll want to create a download link that expires after a certain amount of time or after a certain number of downloads. The trick here is to not use a direct link like http://example.com/protected-file.zip but something like http://example.com/download.php?code=sale_specific_code_here so you have a protected download link.

With the sale specific code you can look up the sale and see if the link is still valid and if so, you can send the file either by reading the file into memory and streaming it or sending the file link with the header mod_xsendfile for Apache or x-sendfile with nginx. Otherwise, if the code isn't valid or is expired, you can simply say so.

Once you have the sale stored in the database, its as simple as dispatching an email to the payer email variable with the protected download link in the message!

Maintaining Download Links

A lot of times you'll have a user lose his download link, or delete the file on accident which requires you to resend or reset a download link. This can be a pain, especially if you have to dig into the database to reset the code and manually send the link. Yuck. An alternative is to build your own download link manager or just use ours.

Now that you have the know-how on how to make a protected pay per download link, you might consider using us instead! We have affordable monthly based plans with no bandwidth limits or commissions. In fact, your customers pay directly into your PayPal account and we never touch the money! We just deliver the files through protected links!

So, check us out and sign up for a free trial!

Lately, it seems PayPal has become the de facto method for accepting money online. Almost anything can be purchased online with PayPal as the middle man. It comes as no surprise that many entrepreneurs want to utilize PayPal as a means for selling digital products online, however, PayPal doesn't provide an easy and fast mechanism in which to deliver these products. If, for example, you sell a copy of your album, you have to manually email the product or provide each customer a link with to the product for each copy. This is certainly a hassle and is what BitBuffet was designed to do.

We use PayPal because everyone uses PayPal!

There is no doubt that PayPal is widely accepted, therefore, we find it obvious that we should utilize PayPal as our means of integrating payments and pay-per-download. The fact that it is fast and secure makes it perfect for our service. Not to mention, if you accept PayPal, you are instantly recognized and validated by being associated with such a powerful brand!

How does it integrate with PayPal? How do I set it up?

Setup is dead simple! Just follow our directions that show you how to set up PayPal with your private BitBuffet URL that receives any and all information pertaining to the sale and automatically dispatches an email. Never get caught with a late delivery of a purchased product again because our files are delivered automatically within 30 seconds.

Are my files protected?

Absolutely! We host your files on secure servers and our download links are only valid for the time you specify during setup. If you only want your customers to download for 7 days or 12 times, no problem! Or even 365 days or 999 downloads. Or maybe 1 day and 1 download. The point is, you set the limit. Never worry about your customers sharing download links again!

How much does it cost?

We offer plans that start at $5 a month for a 100mb plan and 10 products and go up from there. There are no bandwidth restrictions and no commissions. The money goes directly to your PayPal account and you keep the money! What are you waiting for, sign up now for a free 7-day trial!

Are you looking for a method to sell your digital magazine, book, or PDF without designing a system from scratch to work with PayPal? BitBuffet has a ready made and simple method for delivering your products instantly after a customer has made payment. No longer do you have to manually email your product after each sale, let us do that for you!

So, how does it work?

Using BitBuffet is as simple as it gets. In fact, all you need to do is set-up your PayPal account to work with your BitBuffet account, upload your PDF and place a button on your site! Within minutes you'll have a full featured digital download hub!

Once a customer visits your site and clicks the button, they are instantly redirected to PayPal where they pay directly into your account (unlike other download services, BitBuffet does not hold your funds for future disbursement). After the payment is made, our servers send a secure link to the customer where they can download your product per your allowances (which include a time limit and download limit).

Are my PDF files secure?

Absolutely! We only allow the most secure software on our servers and have methods in place to ensure that users can only download a limited number of times specified by you. Additionally, they can't share a link as it is customized and forever tied to their purchase.

Can I keep track of sales?

We offer numerous ways for our users to track sales. You can be notified instantly of all sales or log into your account and view charts or even download CSV's of all your data. We don't lock you into anything!

So, what are you waiting for?

Sign up now for a free 7 day trial and a 30 day money back guarantee if you need a longer time to decide! We'll be happy to have you!

With as many independent bands out there as there are, its no doubt that many of them need a fast and easy way to sell the fruits of their labor. While other services exist, they often don't provide the ease of use a busy band needs. And many of the services force DRM or other restrictions on their listeners (especially if you are lucky enough to get into a mainstream services like iTunes or Rhapsody).

An alternative is to use BitBuffet.com to host your album and provide purchase links on MySpace or your band's website. Here's our technique for doing just this.

1. Sign-up For BitBuffet.com and a PayPal Account

Don't worry, its free to start off (you get a 7-day trial) and you don't need to purchase anything at all if it's not for you. When you sign up for a PayPal account, be sure to select a premier account (again, this is free).

2. Follow the Easy Setup Directions in BitBuffet.com

This shouldn't take more than a couple minutes, all you need to do is point your PayPal account to BitBuffet so we know when someone purchases your album. If you need to go to the setup again, just click "Account Settings" and "Setup Account" in the top right.

3. Zip Up Your MP3's and Upload to BitBuffet

If you have Windows 7, this functionality should be built in, if not, try downloading something like WinRar to "zip" all your MP3s and put them in one file. Sign in to BitBuffet and add a product, name it what you like and upload your zip. This can take anywhere from a couple minutes to an hours, depending on the length of your album.

4. Place a "Button" on MySpace or on Your Band Website

This small button can be found by clicking the product in your Workspace and scrolling down. Simply paste the HTML code into your site.

5. Congrats! Sit Back and Watch the Album Sell!

You should be finished by this point! If you have any problems setting up your account or placing the button you can always contact us via the link up top and we'll reply to you as soon as possible.

Bonus tip: You can create your own button and host it on your site for a custom buy now design. Additionally, if you remove the < img > tag, you can place simple wording as well.

Extra bonus tip: If you aren't 100% sure your album is working, try changing the price to $0.01 and having a friend purchase it and give it a test spin! If you have any trouble, just contact us!

Most of you who are checking out the blog already know what a great service BitBuffet is, but for those uninitiated few, we'll be highlighting some of the finer aspects of selling digital products online. It doesn't matter if you are a band with an upcoming album or an PPC marketer trying to sell ebooks, our product covers all the bases.

If its digital, we can sell it!

Live and learn!

In the upcoming weeks we'll talk about some strategies for becoming successful when selling digital products, especially in the realm of music or professional themes for open source. BitBuffet was specifically designed to operate in a way that simplifies the process and empowers its users.

Feel free to comment or ask us any questions!