What method has been most successful in selling your CDs online? What are the costs? How'd you do it?

We've (SuperGiant) have been selling CDs on our own site just using a PayPal button. PayPal charges like $0.65 for the processing our $10 CD charge, we spend $0.75 on the padded envelope and $0.87 - $4 on shipping. (most of our sales are going to Europe right now?!)

So we make around $7 per CD on average.

I've heard CD Baby charges $4 per CD (regardless of your price) and there is a $50 signup charge. (You have to sell quite a few to make up for that) Also, for a $10 CD you'll only make $6 minus your shipping to them and the $50 signup. Plus, your fans pay shipping ... $7 per CD to Europe!?

So if we do it ourselves, someone in London would pay $10 and we'd make $7. Using CDBABY they'd pay $17 and we'd make $6 (after paying off the $50).

More reason to do it yourself.

How about iTunes ... anyone?

Check out Tunecore.com. It's founded by the guy that owns SpinART records. You pay an annual fee of like $8. It's digital distribution only, as far as I know. I haven't done too much research on it.

Ya, the more I hear about cdBaby, the more I think it's lame. We're just going to sell ourselves through paypal as well-it's the best deal for everyone involved.

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Ya, the more I hear about cdBaby, the more I think it's lame. We're just going to sell ourselves through paypal as well-it's the best deal for everyone involved.

It would probably be a good deal once you get to the level to where you're selling a few dozen CDs per week and you have a day job or just don't want to deal with the shipping... or if you're on tour and can't deal with it. But the buyers ... esp. international buyers end up paying for it.

Their cut definately beats a record label's cut if you're unsigned!!

But a mailing out few CDs per week is pretty easy to manage thru PayPal.

My 2cents worth...

CD Baby is a great deal. Its $35 set up fee. That includes getting your digital songs on EVERY available download site there is, including iTunes. They also do Best Buy, and Tower Records.

From there they also offer physical distribution to stores now.

I have sold every album I have ever made on there. So far the digital downloads from iTunes alone have paid for the $35 processing fee for our last record.

BTW - If you get your discs printed at Disk Makers CD Baby will wave the fee.

Also, does anyone have any good suggestions for boosting web CD sales?

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CD Baby is a great deal. Its $35 set up fee. That includes getting your digital songs on EVERY available download site there is, including iTunes. They also do Best Buy, and Tower Records.

wow, i didn't know that. that's pretty cool

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From there they also offer physical distribution to stores now.

???? Who CD Baby? Please explain further

We've been pretty pleased with CD Baby. I have enough on my plate running the band that I can't effectively handle our own web sales as well. If you've worked out a system for that using PayPal, I think that's great.

CD Baby takes care of all of our digital distribution, which is nice. They got us on iTunes lickety-split. Their customer service is great and they waived the setup fees for both our albums becuase we used Discmakers. Anyway, it's definitely worked well for us.

Hey WM: Basically, they are the warehouse for stores to order from. So for example, Natrual Sound can order your discs from this 'warehouse. Below is from their website.

In-Store Distribution for Your CD
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CD Baby will make your CD available to over 2400 CD stores worldwide (mostly United States).
Even better than typical distribution, though, you get paid your full CD Baby price, with no returns, and you always get paid the following week, just like a regular CD Baby sale.
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This is done through our partnership with one of the largest one-stop distributors in America.

What is a “One-Stop”?
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A “one-stop” is a wholesaler that gets products from many different distributors, into one central ordering system for retail stores.
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A one-stop CD distributor offers retail stores everything from the Beatles to Miles Davis, and now : you.
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Retail stores order from a one-stop to save time and trouble over ordering from many different distributors.
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Our partnership is with Super D : one of the largest one-stop CD distributors in America.
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Super D has a great reputation, a great sales staff, and are very excited to be making the CD Baby catalog available to every retail store.

Thanks for the comments. That def. makes CD baby look a bit more attractive. It still seems like their shipping is a bit steep.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to make your disks available thru both your own site and theirs.

Do they have rules against that that you know of?