These days, everyone can be a creator. Technology has democratized the creative process, and almost anyone can now sell creative products such as music, photography, videos, eBooks and artwork online. But while online marketplaces will guarantee you a lot of visibility, there’s a lot you have to give up in return: marketplaces often take a significant cut of your sales, you’re not in control of the look and branding of the site and sometimes you don’t even have control over the pricing of your products.

This is where digital sales services come in handy. They connect you and your customers directly but, at the same time, handle the sales and digital distribution, cutting out the hassle and letting you focus solely on the products. With these services, you’re in complete control of the pricing of your products and the branding on the site, not to mention the fact that these services won’t take a 70% cut of your sales. Here are 10 such services that you may just want to take a closer look at.

Recommended Reading: 7 Free E-Commerce WordPress Plugins

1. Gumroad

Gumroad is one of the newest services designed to help you sell digital downloads of your eBooks, videos, photographs and software. One of the most interesting things about Gumroad is that it deals with credit card companies directly, bypassing PayPal’s 2.9% surcharge. Another benefit of this is that sales on Gumroad will work in countries that are not supported by PayPal. Gumroad also lets you sell physical products.

Fees: 5% + $0.25 commission per sale. No monthly fee.

2. FetchApp

FetchApp started as a Shopify app, so it offers easy integration with Shopify, which is handy if you also have a Shopify account and wish to link the two. It also has an API if you wish to integrate it with your existing webiste. FetchApp plans have no limit on the number of eBooks, music files, videos or digital artworks you can upload. Bandwidth is also unlimited.

Fees: Free – $500/month. No commission.

3. Intubus

Intubus is a great crowd-centric solution for selling digital products such as eBooks, movies, music, photography and artwork. Intubus lets you create shopping widgets to sell your products that can be embedded on any website you choose. The best thing about these widgets is that they also feature content from other Intubus users; so, your products won’t just be appearing in your widget, but also on other users’ widgets all across the Internet.

Fees: 5% commission per sale. No monthly fee.

4. Sellfy

Sellfy claims to provide the simplest way to sell your eBooks, photographs, music, themes and other digital downloads. One of the most interesting features of Sellfy is that you can offer discounts to customers who share your products via Twitter and Facebook. You can track the effectiveness of these discounts and see what effect discount offers will have on sales. Sellfy gives you unlimited storage and bandwidth for your digital art, eBooks, programs and digital content.

Fees: 5% commission per sale. No monthly fee.

5. Pulley

Pulley is a spinoff from BigCartel, offering a simple shopping cart system for selling your music, videos, eBooks, fonts and other digital downloads. You can embed Buy Now buttons onto any websites, and can even track your sales with Pulley’s statistics view. Pulley operates on a monthly subscription model, but also offers a free 14-day trial so you can see whether Pulley is right for your eBooks, fonts and digital products.

Fees: $6/month – $49/month. No commisison.

6. Simple Goods

Simple Goods is another one of the few services for selling digital content such as eBooks, music and design work that accept credit card payments directly, with low fees. Aside from the low fees, Simplegoods features MailChimp integration, mobile readiness, in-depth analytics and insights as well as the ability to embed a checkout button directly into your site. Simplegoods also has unlimited file storage and bandwith.

Fees: 2.9% + $0.45 commission per sale. No monthly fee.

7. SendOwl

SendOwl will appeal to anyone looking to sell digital content, but it has a couple of features that will make it particulalry appealing to those who want to sell software, eBooks and PDF files. For one, SendOwl has a PDF protection feature that will stamp each PDF download with the customer’s name and e-mail. You can also inform customers of product updates and let them download the update for free.

Fees: $9/month – $39/month. No commission.

8. Selz

Selz is a feature-rich service for anyone looking to sell artwork, eBooks, music, software and other digital content. Selz will be of interest to moviemakers, since it supports files up to 4GB in size. Selz has a WordPress plugin, and each account comes with a free Facebook store account. Each store also has a built-in direct messaging feature. Selz provides audio and video previews, PDF stamping and the ability to set "pay what you want" pricing. Selz also has no bandwidth or storage limits.

Fees: 5% + $0.25 commission per sale. No monthly fee.

9. Digital Goods Store

Digital Goods Store is quite a comprehensive solution if you’re looking to sell digital content such as movies, music, eBooks and themes. Digital Goods Store offers both PDF stamping and download protection to protect you from piracy. In addition, Digital Goods Store supports landing pages and integrates with email marketing services MailChimp and GetResponse.

Fees: 5% commission per sale for free account. $39.99/month for pro account.

10. DPD

DPD offers one of the more customizable services for selling your digital art, eBooks, movies, music and so on. It lets you customize your cart, checkout, delivery pages and emails using a simple WYSIWYG editor. It also supports selling keycodes, subscriptions and even physical products. Bandwidth and sales are unlimited for all subscription plans.

Fees: $10/month – $130/month. No commission.

Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by Issa Mirandilla, who writes about freelancing, writing, marketing, careers, personal finance and other business-related topics. Give her a nudge on Twitter or visit her website here.

Have you ever pitched a guest post idea to a blog, only to get a polite rejection in return – or worse, no reply at all? It hurts, doesn’t it? Rejection can either embitter you ("But this is an awesome idea! How could those blog owners think otherwise?"), or fill you with self-doubt ("Well, I guess this was a stupid idea after all.").

These initial reactions are understandable; after all, rejection can beat anyone’s ego to a bloody pulp. Regardless, when it comes to your rejected pitch, you might want to simmer down and clear your head first.

Recommended Reading: Guest Posts – 10 Tips To Distinguish The Good From The Bad

Once you’re in a better mood, you can take a second look at your pitch and:

Revise It

The thing about rejections is this: they are not meant to be taken personally. Remember that a rejection of your idea is not necessarily a rejection of you, and it can happen for a number of reasons, such as:

• The site’s guest post guidelines weren’t followed to a T.
• The topic has already been covered on the site.
• The topic is too common in the industry.
• The topic isn’t in line with the site’s niche.
• The pitch has too many typos and other critical errors.
• The pitch doesn’t demonstrate why you’re the most qualified person to write the article.
• The pitch feels more like marketing material for you than a potentially valuable resource for the site’s readers.
• Your writing style/voice doesn’t mesh with the site’s.

If any of the above seems true in your case, go over your pitch again, reflect on how it can be improved, and edit. You might want to ask for help on the editing part, lest you overlook any errors in spelling, grammar, structure, flow, facts and figures, etc.

Read Also: Guest Posting – 8 Tips To Getting Your Submissions Published

When you’re done, send your revised pitch to your target site again. If you have second thoughts about doing this because you don’t want to appear pushy or desperate, you can…

Pitch another Website

As shown in some of the reasons above, the rejection of your pitch may have zero connection to whether it’s a "good" idea. For example, your idea on "How to Write a Blog Post" may be helpful for beginners, but if you’re pitching that to a site that has already written dozens of articles on advanced topics like "How to Combine Blogging and E-mail Marketing for Maximum Conversion", your pitch probably won’t fly.

Before you pitch any site, ask yourself: "Is this a good fit for the site?" If it’s a "Yes", send in your idea and do your best to convince the site’s owners that you’re capable of crafting a unique, creative and/or useful article out of that idea. Otherwise…

Publish It in Your Online Portfolio

What if you can’t find any site willing to accept your pitch, but you still want to turn your idea into a full-blown article? In that case, consider adding the article to your online portfolio. The great thing about doing this is that you own all rights to the piece, since you’re the one who wrote and published it on your own site.

Of course, just because you have free rein over your self-published article doesn’t give you the excuse to churn out half-baked work. Since the article is part of your professional portfolio, you still want it to show off the best of your abilities to prospective clients.

Read Also: Resurrect Your Deceased Designs And Make Them Work For You

Throw It Away

Sometimes, you just have to accept that your pitch is "bad" – plain and simple. "Bad" can mean a lot of things. It could be that your idea has already been done to death, so even if you publish the finished piece on your own website, you’ll only end up with a redundant article or, worse, search engine fodder.

It’s also possible that your idea is good, but you don’t really have the expertise or writing chops to expound on it for your intended readers. When you have a "bad" pitch on your hands, it’s probably best to leave it and move on. You don’t want to stay with an idea that will give you heartaches because you can’t write or publish it, do you?

Read Also: 6 Simple Tips To Write Your Next Killer Post

Keep It

On the flip side, letting go of your "bad" idea may turn out to be easier said than done. You feel like a mother who abandoned her baby on the doorsteps of an orphanage, even though she could’ve taken good care of her child otherwise.

Maybe you’re just not ready to construct an article out of your idea yet. Maybe you need to file it away for now, so you can come back to it later when you run out of pitches in the future. It’s always a good habit to avoid waste – especially when your "trash" today can be someone else’s "gold" tomorrow.

Read Also: 3 Fatal Mistakes To Avoid In Guest Blogging

Takeaway

A healthy dose of resilience, optimism and persistence can go a long way not just in your guest posting and writing skills, but also your freelancing career as a whole.

Don’t throw away your guest post pitch immediately after it’s rejected. Instead, try to figure out how else you can profit from it first, before you give it a one-way trip to the nether world of Ideas Best Left Forgotten.

Photoshop actions can be a brilliant time-saving tool, especially when one needs to edit and apply the same settings on a huge number of images in quick succession. With Photoshop actions, you can do things like retouching portraits, converting photos to black and white, and dramatically changing the look of a picture by making it sharp, smooth, dreamy or grungy.

Actions are easy to install, and you need to push just one button to apply lots of settings and turn an ordinary image into a breathtaking shot. Therefore, it isn’t surprising to see new actions being created every day by professional photographers, designers, and other enthusiasts.

If you’re looking for some good places to get high-quality Photoshop actions, we’ve got just the thing for you. Here’s a list of 10 websites to get fantastic Photoshop actions, some of which are free.

Recommended Reading: How To Set Keyboard Shortcuts For ‘Play Action’ In Photoshop

Adobe. Adobe.com features tons of free Photoshop actions, which can be filtered by licence type (e.g. Shareware, Open Source, Freeware, Donation, Commercial, etc.). Each action is listed with a preview image as well as a brief description.

Photoshop Tutorials. This website is mainly dedicated to Photoshop tutorials, but it also has lots of free Photoshop actions for you to download. All the Photoshop actions available on the site are presented in the blog's feed and are categorised to ease your search.

PhotographyPla.net. A useful resource for photographers. Here you'll find tons of Photoshop actions, Lightroom presets, frames, photo overlays, textures, print templates, and other products you can buy. Moreover, their blog contains photography articles and some Photoshop actions that can be downloaded for free.

Brusheezy. A cool website where you'll find a huge number of Photoshop elements any photographer or designer may need, such as free brushes, actions, textures, patterns, shapes, gradients, UI kits, and many more. Just use the relevant keywords to find exactly what you want to look for.

MCP Actions. On this site, you can find tons of Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets that you can buy, and photography workshops you can sign up for a fee. Aside from the items for sale, there are also actions and Lightroom presets that you can download for free. The site also runs a fantastic blog with video editing tutorials and useful photography tips and tricks.

Florabella Collection. Another reliable website to get professional and high-quality Photoshop actions from. With action bundles priced at over $100, the site is aimed at professional photographers who edit tons of photos every day. Most of their actions are soft and may spice up any picture in no time. The site also has some free retouching tutorials.

Yellow Sky Actions. Another good website where you can buy high-quality Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets. Besides soft-light, vintage, and natural light actions, you'll also find retouching and black & white actions in every bundle they sell. There are preview images for each pack of actions so that you’ll know what you’re getting. The price of actions sets range from $50 to $75.

Bellevue Avenue. A website that sells lots of different action sets to suit various needs, for example, special kits to retouch skin, eyes and teeth, and dreamy action kits for baby photographs. Besides that, there’s also a free action bundle for Facebook, print, and web designs. Some free video tutorials on creating Photoshop actions are also available on the site.

LookFilter. Curated by a group of experienced professional photographers, this website sells a number of high-quality Photoshop actions with prices ranging from $29 to $199. The site also has free Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets as well as video tutorials.

Totally Rad. A clean and user-friendly website that sells some amazing action kits. You can sign up for an account on the site to get some free samples of their high-quality Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets, which can turn any image into eye candy.

To develop WordPress locally in our computer, we need a local server with Apache and MySQL installed in our computer. The easiest way to get these is by installing a packaged application, such as WAMP for Windows, and MAMP for OSX.

However, installing WordPress within it is less straightforward. First, we need to put the WordPress files in its corresponding folder, which is usually named htdocs, create a database for it, input the required information to connect WordPress to the database, and set a user account before we can finally get the site to run.

Combine it with the setup of a virtualhost, and the number of WordPress sites that you have to handle, and the process will certainly be even more convoluted. If you found yourself in this situation, you might want to try an application called ServerPress.

Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guide To WordPress Multisite With MAMP

Using ServerPress

ServerPress is a local server application that is built specifically for developing WordPress, as well as bbPress and BuddyPress. It comes with the feature that allows us to install WordPress quicker than originally possible. It is available for Windows and OSX; Grab the installer here, and follow the instruction as per your OS.

Once the Web and Database services (Apache, MySQL) are running, we are ready to install WordPress.

Installing WordPress

Before proceeding, please note that if you are using Pow, you may need to deactivate or uninstall it to avoid a conflict, because both Pow and ServerPress use a .dev domain name.

To create a new WordPress project, select Create a new development website.

Name your website domain, and select the WordPress version you would like to install. In the Site Root section, you can see where the site will be installed.

Click Next button. ServerPress will automatically set the required stuff (tables, servername, virtualhost, etc) automatically. Follow the next step to create an Admin user for your site.

Your new website is all set.

Moving and Changing Domain Name

With ServerPress, it is also possible to change or copy your current sites with another domain name, which only takes a few clicks.

Select Remove, copy, or move an existing website.

Select your site, and chose whether you want to Copy, Move, or Remove it. In this case, as you can see from the screenshot below, I would like to move my website; putting it under a new domain name.

Set your new site domain name. Then, in the Site Root section, you can also specify the folder location for the website. Click the Next button. It will take care of everything. And we are done.

Final Thought

If you do not want a messy and complicated way to setup WordPress and virtualhost, ServerPress could be a good alternative. With it, you can have it up and running in only a few clicks. Give it a try.