Easy Digital Downloads – a way to sell your digital content

Hello friends,

In today’s post I will present to you one WordPress plugin that will be ideal for those of you who want to transform their website into an eCommerce place for digital products. This solution is called Easy Digital Downloads!

What does Easy Digital Downloads do?

This plugin provides the complete functionality needed for a standard eCommerce solution for digital products. The free version is powerful enough to get you started. However if you want better support and access to additional extensions that will enhance the overall functionality, you have to consider purchasing some of the plans provided on the official website of the plugin.

However in this post I will be covering the free version of Easy Digital Downloads. You can download it from WordPress.org.

This version provides you with:

• FREE eCommerce solution for your WordPress website;
• Shopping cart system;
• Customer management tools;
• Ability to create discount codes for your customers;
• Data reporting tools that give you detailed information;

How to use Easy Digital Downloads?

I have already provided the link to the official website and the WordPress.org page of the plugin. Download it from one of these places and then install and activate. Once you do this you will get a new menu in your WordPress admin panel. It will be called Downloads and will contain several sub-menus:

• Settings – like any other WordPress plugin, Easy Digital Downloads needs to be set up in order to provide you with the most suitable functionality for your needs. So in this sub-menu you need to adjust a few settings:
  • General: here you have to define your:
    • Checkout Page
    • Success Page
    • Failed Transaction Page
    • Purchase History Page
    • Login Redirect Page
    • Base Country
    • Base State / Province
    • Allow or disable Tracking
    • Currency – note that some currencies are currently not supported as well as some payment gateways have currency restrictions.
    • Currency Position
    • Thousands Separator
    • Decimal Separator
    • Allow or disable API keys
  • Payment Gateways: here you need to define the default gateway (PayPal, Amazon, Test Payment) as well as the accepted payment method icons. In the Test Payment mode no live transactions are processed. To fully use test mode, you must have a sandbox (test) account for the payment gateway you are testing. In the Payment Gateways tab you have to enter the settings for the chosen payment gateways as well.
  • Emails: here you can define the different emails that are going to be sent for different events when a purchase occurs.
  • Styles: style settings for your eCommerce solution.
  • Taxes: setup for taxes that need to be paid for the different countries.
  • Misc: additional settings that you need to adjust in order your eCommerce solution to comply with standards and best practices.
• Downloads – here your digital products will be displayed. You can view information about the set price for the product, its sales and earnings. From here you can add new products or edit existing ones.
• Add New Download – this will allow you to create a new digital product. The style of this page resembles the standard post/page creation screen. Enter the product description, add some images and then set the price, product type, add download notes and other settings. When editing a digital download you will see the same screen and you will be also able to see details about its sales and earnings.
• Categories – define categories for your digital downloads in the same way as you define post categories.
• Tags – the same but this time with tags for your digital products.
• Payment History – get information about payments.
• Customers – detailed information about your customers, which contain: email address, purchases, total spent amount, date created.
• Discount Codes – generate discounts for your customers.
• Reports – from here you can see you detailed statistics.
• Tools – enter banned email addresses, manage API keys, see system information, import or export CSV files of payment records.
• Extensions – purchase additional extensions to make Easy Digital Downloads even more powerful.

A note on the pages, created by the plugin – if you delete them you can re-create them at a later point. Make sure to add the generated shortcodes for each page to the new ones in order to start using them for Easy Digital Downloads. These shortcodes can be found under Settings in the General tab.

Once you are ready with the settings you can start selling your digital products.

So, what do you think, friends? Will you give Easy Digital Downloads a try? Share your thoughts and questions in the comment section below.

See you soon, friends!