Pulley Help

Welcome to Pulley

Pulley is the easiest way for artists to sell digital products

Pulley is an automated, seamless, and secure way to have digital goods sent to your customers after they’ve been purchased. It’s perfect for selling things like:

• artwork
• digital music
• photography
• video
• e-books
• software

Virtually any downloadable file you have the legal right to sell can be sold through Pulley.

Sell from almost anywhere online

Pulley gives you simple code snippets you can embed anywhere online:

• websites
• blogs (including WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc.)
• social networks (including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.)
• email

Even better, you can sell Pulley products directly through any Big Cartel store.

How Pulley works

The basic process for selling a product with Pulley goes something like this:

1. Create a new product in Pulley by supplying a name, price, and digital file.
2. Sell the product using one of our many selling options.
3. When a new order is received, Pulley emails your customer a secure link to download their products, and notifies you of all the order.

That’s it! Easy huh?

Getting started

Logging in

To log in, simply visit the Pulley URL you created when you signed up. This URL is also included in your welcome email. Ex: http://example.pulleyapp.com

Getting started

1. Adjust your settings - update your settings and setup PayPal and/or Big Cartel for accepting payment.
2. Add your products - upload your products to our secure servers.
3. Start selling - promote and sell your products, and keep tabs on the orders coming in.

Staying up to date

Stay current on all the latest Pulley news and updates by following @pulleyapp on Twitter, and subscribing to the Big Cartel blog.

Security

Security is Pulley’s top priority when dealing with your digital products, and we go out of our way to ensure they don’t end up in the wrong hands.

Secure file hosting

All files are hosted privately on Amazon’s S3 service, which uses proven cryptographic methods to authenticate users, and all files are always transferred securely over SSL. This means someone can’t download your files without us explicitly providing them with a secure download link, as mentioned below.

For more information on Amazon’s security measures, please refer to the Amazon Web Services: Overview of Security Processes document »

Secure download links

When someone buys one of your Pulley products, they are automatically emailed a secure download link that allows them 3 download attempts for each product they’ve purchased. This provides them with a couple extra download attempts in case there’s a problem with their internet connection, while also limiting their ability to illegally give out the download link to others.

Billing & Account

You can quickly view or manage your account's plan or billing information by heading over to the Account page.

14-day free trial

Our free trial allows you to sign up for any plan and use Pulley free and unrestricted for 14 days. If you like it, you can activate your account afterwards. No commitment. No credit card required.

Upgrading and downgrading

Any time you want more or less from your Pulley account, you can instantly change plans on the Account page. Pulley is a pay-as-you-go service, so everything is month-to-month. No contracts. No partial/pro-rated refunds are given, sorry.

Switch the credit card billed for your account

You can view or update the credit card billed monthly for your Pulley account by going to the Account page and clicking the Billing Information button. From here you can see when your next payment is due, how it will be paid, and make any changes you need to your billing info.

View payment history

You can view receipts for all of your monthly Pulley payments by going to the Account page and clicking the Payment History button. From here you can view or print your individual payment invoices.

Closing your account

You can cancel your Pulley account at the bottom of the Account page. However, closing your account will immediately and permanently delete all products, orders, stats, and other data, so please be sure that's what you want to do. No partial/pro-rated refunds are given, sorry.

If you just need to change your store’s name or URL, you can do that on the Settings > General page.

Managing orders

Dashboard

The Pulley dashboard gives you an interactive chart showing your sales by day, week, and month. It also gives you a quick snapshot of your latest orders, top products, and recent download activity.

Browsing, filtering, and searching orders

The Orders section allows you to easily thumb through the orders you’ve received. To narrow the field a bit, you can also filter your orders by status or search for an order by the its id or the buyer’s name or email.

Order statuses

Pulley orders are broken down into 4 distinct statuses:

• Pending - the order was placed, but payment has not yet completed (typically a PayPal eCheck)
• Delivered - the order has been emailed to the buyer, but they haven’t downloaded all of their products yet
• Completed - all products in the order have been downloaded by the buyer
• Failed - payment for the order was either invalid or has otherwise failed

Order information

Clicking on an order from the Orders page provides you with detailed information pertaining to that specific order:

• Status - the current status of the order
• Buyer information - the name and email of your customer
• Order number - the unique ID for this order
• Order date - the date the order was originally created
• Payment method - how the order was paid for (either PayPal or Big Cartel)
• Products ordered - what was ordered, how much they paid, and how many times they’ve been downloaded
• History - a complete log of events this order has gone through, from start to finish

Resending orders

By default, your customers always receive 3 download attempts per product in their order. However, you may run into situations where your customer still hasn’t been able to successfully download your item, even after 3 attempts (perhaps due to a problem with their internet connection). Or maybe they say they never received the original order email to begin with. When this happens, you can easily resend the order to them.

1. Pull up the order in your Pulley account, and click the Resend button in the top right
2. Customize the email if you’d like (change the recipient if the original email failed) and click Send
3. The order’s download limits will be reset and the order will be emailed to your customer and marked as Delivered

Note: only Delivered and Completed orders where all products are still active can be resent.

Buying process

Buying from a website, blog, social network, or email

This is what the process looks like when buying from a website, blog, social network, or email:

1. Your customer clicks your Buy Now link and is taken to PayPal to purchase the product.
2. If they complete the purchase, they’re taken to your Success URL. If not, they’re taken to your Cancel URL.
3. They receive their customized order email and click the secure download links inside to obtain their products.

See the process yourself by purchasing this $0.01 product »

Buying from Big Cartel

This is what the process looks like when buying from your Big Cartel store:

1. Your customer adds your product to their cart, clicks Checkout, and is taken to PayPal to purchase their cart items.
2. If they complete the purchase, they’re taken to your store’s Success page. If not, they’re taken to the Cart page.
3. They receive their customized order email and click the secure download links inside to obtain their products.

See the process yourself by purchasing this $0.01 Big Cartel product »

Missing order emails

If your customer contacts you saying they never received their order email, first have them check their spam/junk folder. If the email is there, suggest that they add the from email address to their safe sender list. If not, you can ask them for a different email address and resend the order there.

Reaching the download limit

If your customer exceeds the 3 download limit on one of their products, and they attempt to download the item a fourth time, they will be presented with an error message explaining that they’ve reached the download limit on this item, and to contact you for additional downloads. Once they’ve contacted you, you have the option of resending their order to them, which will give them 3 more attempts for each item in their order.

Customizing order emails

Order emails

On the Settings > Order Emails section of your Pulley account you can customize the emails your customers will receive from you:

• Order email - sent to your customer when their order is paid for and ready to be downloaded
• Pending email - sent to your customer when their order is received but their payment is still pending (eChecks)

Variables

Use special variables inside your emails to automatically populate data into the subject or body of your order email.

• {{ company.name }} - the company name listed on your Settings > General page
• {{ company.email }} - the email address listed on your Settings > General page
• {{ order.number }} - the unique ID for this order
• {{ order.buyer_name }} - your customer’s first and last name
• {{ order.buyer_email }} - your customer’s email address
• {{ order.amount }} - the total amount paid for this order
• {{ order.item_count }} - the number of items in this order
• {{ order.items }} - an array (list) of all items in this order
• {{ item.name }} - the name of the product
• {{ item.price }} - the price of the product
• {{ item.url }} - the private download url of the product

Syntax

Now that you know the variables, use them in any number of creative ways.

Hey {{ order.buyer_name }}, your order is ready!

{% for item in order.items %}
{{ item.name }}
{{ item.url }}
{% endfor %}

Thank you for ordering from {{ company.name }}!

Learn more about this syntax »

Managing products

Adding, editing, and deleting products

With Pulley, products can be added, edited, or deleted at any time. A product consists of only three things:

• Name - what you want to call this product (doesn’t have to match the file name)
• Price - how much you want Pulley to charge for this product
• Attachment - the digital file being sold (max size 5GB)

File uploads

Any time you add or change an attachment it will be securely uploaded to our servers. Most of the time this process is quick, but larger files can take some time to complete. Not to worry, we show you the upload progress of all products, and you can upload multiple products at the same time.

Adding multiple attachments to one product

If your product requires two or more files to be attached to it, you can accomplish this by zipping the files together into one file on your computer before uploading it. If you’ve never created a ZIP file before, it’s actually quite easy:

Windows

1. Locate the files or folder that you want to zip.
2. Click to select a folder or hold the Ctrl key while clicking multiple files.
3. Right-click on the selected area, point to Send To, and then click Compressed (zipped) Folder.
4. To rename the new zip file, right-click it, select Rename, and type a new name.

Mac OSX

1. Locate the files or folder that you want to zip.
2. Click to select a folder or hold the command key while clicking multiple files.
3. Right-click on the selected area and click Compress 2 Items (or Create Archive of 2 Items in earlier versions).
4. To rename the new zip file, do a slow double-click on the file name, and type a new name.

Importing from Big Cartel

Linking your Big Cartel store

To begin selling your Big Cartel products through Pulley, you’ll first need to link your accounts:

1. Head over to the Settings > Checkout page of your Pulley account.
2. Enter your Big Cartel store’s subdomain and password. (Ex: if your store’s URL is mystore.bigcartel.com, enter mystore)
3. Click Save.

Add your digital products to Big Cartel first

Before we can import your Big Cartel products into Pulley, we’ll obviously need to add them to Big Cartel first.

1. Create a new product in your Big Cartel store, and fill out the product info like you normally do.
2. Under Shipping, create a rate for Everywhere and give Shipped alone and With others both 0.00.
3. If inventory tracking is on, use an extremely high In stock amount. Ex: 999999 (unless you’d like to limit sales)
4. Click Save.

Importing your Big Cartel products

Once you’ve got your store linked, and your products added to Big Cartel, importing them into Pulley is a snap.

1. Head over to the Products page of your Pulley account.
2. Click Add Product and select Import from Big Cartel.
3. Select the product you’d like to import, and click Import.
4. The name and price are already set, so add your attachment and click OK.

That’s it! You can still edit your attachment as usual, but to edit the product’s name or price you’d simply update the product in Big Cartel, and Pulley will automatically update too. It’s magic!

Selling Big Cartel products

Products imported into Pulley can be sold through your Big Cartel store just like any other. The only difference is that when this product sells through Big Cartel, Pulley will record the order and deliver the digital product to your customer.

Note: products imported from Big Cartel can still be sold separately like regular Pulley products.

Unlinking your Big Cartel store

You can unlink your Pulley and Big Cartel accounts at any time by going to the Settings > Checkout page and clicking the trash icon next to your Big Cartel URL. Unlinking your accounts will not delete any Big Cartel or Pulley products, they will still work separately on each site.

Promoting and selling

Where to sell your Pulley products

Pulley products can be purchased by simply accessing their individual URL. To make things even easier, we provide you with some basic HTML snippets that you can use to embed these URLs anywhere online:

• websites
• blogs (including WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc.)
• social networks (including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.)
• email

Buy Now links

Our Buy Now links can be embedded anywhere that allows you to enter HTML: websites, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and more. Here’s how:

1. Go to your Products page in Pulley and click the Sell button next to a product.
2. Next to the Buy Now link you’d like to use, click on the white area containing the code to select it.
3. Right-click the highlighted text, and click Copy.
4. Go to the website you’d like to embed it to, right-click again, and select Paste.

That’s it! Now your products can be sold directly from there. If you’d like to use an image in your link, instead of the Buy Now text, simply replace the text with an HTML image tag. For example:

<a href="http://pul.ly/b/1234" title="Buy My Product"><img src="http://example.com/myimage.jpg" /></a>

Using the Direct URL

Sometimes you can’t use HTML, and you’ll instead need to send people to the product’s URL directly (such as with Twitter and email). We’ve made this extremely simple to do by providing you with shortened URLs that will fit inside a tweet, or be easy to click or copy from an email.

1. Go to your Products page in Pulley and click the Sell button next to a product.
2. Next to the Direct URL text, click on the white area containing the URL to select it.
3. Right-click the highlighted text, and click Copy.
4. Go to the location you’d like to embed it to (email, tweet, etc.), right-click again, and select Paste.

Selling from your Big Cartel store

Selling your imported products from Big Cartel is automatic. Check out our section on importing products from Big Cartel for more info.

General settings

General settings

On the Settings > General page you can configure some basic information about your Pulley account:

• Company name - the name that will be shown to your customers when they order from you
• Email - the email address you’d like us to use to contact you regarding your account
• Country - sets the default language for PayPal checkout
• Currency - the currency you’d like to sell your products with (see below)
• Timezone - used to display your order stats by day, week, month, and year

Supported currencies

• Australian Dollar (AUD $)
• Brazilian Real (BRL R$) *
• Canadian Dollar (CAD $)
• Czech Koruna (CZK Kč)
• Danish Krone (DKK kr)
• Euro (EUR €)
• Hong Kong Dollar (HKD $)
• Hungarian Forint (HUF Ft)
• Israeli New Shekel (ILS ₪)
• Japanese Yen (JPY ¥)
• Malaysian Ringgit (MYR RM) *
• Mexican Peso (MXN $)
• New Taiwan Dollar (TWD NT$)
• New Zealand Dollar (NZD $)
• Norwegian Krone (NOK kr)
• Philippine Peso (PHP ₱)
• Polish Zloty (PLN zł)
• Pound Sterling (GBP £)
• Singapore Dollar (SGD $)
• Swedish Krona (SEK kr)
• Swiss Franc (CHF SFr.)
• Thai Baht (THB ฿)
• Turkish Lira (TRY TL)
• U.S. Dollar (USD $)

* Note: This currency is supported as a payment currency and a currency balance for in-country PayPal accounts only.

Setting up PayPal

Setting up PayPal in Pulley

To begin selling your Pulley products with PayPal, head over to the Settings > Checkout page and give us three bits of info:

• PayPal email - the email address associated with your PayPal Business or Premier account
• Success URL - the URL you’d like customers to return to after successfully placing an order
• Cancel URL - the URL you’d like customers to return to if they don’t complete the checkout process

Pro tip: you can override the success and cancel URLs on any product link by adding parameters such as:

http://pul.ly/b/12345?success_url=http://success.com&cancel_url=http://cancel.com

Creating a PayPal account

To use PayPal on Pulley you’ll need a PayPal Business or Premier account. If you don't already have one, signing up is easy (and free).

Premier account

1. Visit PayPal’s website and click Sign Up Today.
2. Select your country or region, your language, and choose Premier account.
3. Fill in all of the required fields presented and click Agree and Create Account.

Business account

1. Visit PayPal’s website and click Sign Up Today.
2. Select your country or region, your language, and choose Business account.
3. Select Website Payments Standard for your Payment Solution and click continue.
4. Follow the three steps to complete your registration. For Step 1, select Other for your Sales Venue(s).

Making a PayPal account optional for your buyers

Your customers are not required to have a PayPal account to purchase your Pulley products. They can pay using only a credit card if they choose. This is a feature available to Premier and Business PayPal accounts. Learn more »

This should be enabled in your PayPal account by default, but just in case you can head to the Profile > Website Payment Preferences section of your PayPal account, and turn on PayPal Account Optional.

If you don’t see an option to pay with a credit card on the PayPal checkout screen, and you’ve enabled PayPal Account Optional as we mention above, then it’s probably because PayPal has set a cookie on your computer that remembers you’ve used a PayPal account in the past. To see the option you can remove all cookies from PayPal.com.