Commercial Use Files - way of tracking times sold?

[Naomi5DAF]

Hi,

I'm wanting to sell an Indesign file to a business for commercial use, they will then resell the item with their branding. Is there a way to keep track of the amount of times they sell the file/product (other than branding the product which i cannot do)?

Or is this left up to good will on their behalf.

Thanks,

Naomi

[Manan Joshi]

There ain't a way to do that afaik, the file can't call back home to let you know where it landed and also sale is a conceptual thought, for a file the sale is just similiar to copying it from one folder to another. I don't know much about NFT's so if someone knowledgeable could see if this could be solved by NFT's somehow.

-Manan

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

You could host it on a website that requires a unique code to download it each time. 

Similar to secure logins. 

So each time they sell it they are required to insert their phone number/email address

This then triggers a security service to send them a unique code

They enter the unique code

They are then prompted to enter the end users email to send the file.

It's a complex one - because you could just do it once to your own email - and pay once and have the file forever.

There's no way to securely password-protect any file either.

I mean once they have the file once - they can put it on their site forever or send to whoever they want.

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Solution - don't sell it by volume of units sold.

Sell it as a singular unit to them for a price that you're both happy with.

And a service add-on plan of x-amount a month paid directly to you for troubleshooting/edits/updates etc. 

That way you get a fixed amount for your product.

Plus you get a quarterly fee of x-amount to fix up.

I'd be careful with the service add-on plan - this would be up to you. 

But I'd be adamant that this happens once a month or once a quarter and you deliver the files.

You don't want to end up in a situation where you're tweaking the template everyday for 100s of customers.

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Another option and probably a bit more expensive to start up 

There's online drag and drop layout viewers - you upload your InDesign file - and it makes it a drag and drop template. You choose your locked down items and editable fields etc. 

Then the end user can only edit the items  you allow.

There's other qualifying controls too - like image resolution - so if they upload an image to use and it's too low resolution it won't upload and requests a higher resolution image. 

They're quite robust. 

So a service like this (not saying this is the one for you)

https://www.2imagine.com/onlineeditor

But you control the content that goes up there - you get the stats on what's downloaded - you control the data.

And the end users and go online - edit online - and download a final InDesign document.

But you're in control.

I'm pretty sure you can whitelabel the skins (to show your customers branding (not yours).

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There are options - my last option there is something I've done before and it's great - you can get exact stats etc. on everything done which makes it easily billable - as you control the platform.

In essence though you're also the service provider - which means troubleshooting problems. But again, you can roll that into monthly/quarterly/ case-by-case/ basis to charge more on top of what it costs to edit/download your files. 

[Naomi5DAF]

Thanks Eugene, that's very in-depth. 🙂 I'll look into those suggestions.