Solution for digital products? (not download!)

[antifragile]

Hi, I am looking for some advice please. We have the following constellation / plan:

• We sell how-to's, currently in offline, paper format. The how-to's have 60-140 single steps, a picture and a short explanatory text
• We would like to sell them online, in two ways: subscription plan for all or a subset of offerings and pay-per-piece
• There are loads of extensions which enable downloads as PDF - we would prefer not to offer this, because either they are sharable, or if encrypted, with lots of potential trouble for users
• I'd rather offer them for online view, in a way that it is very laborious to copy; basically one step=1 page, then continue with a read-on button
• Great would be if one could either put the subscription or the individual product into the cart, after purchase providing a link into the secured content area

What would really be cool would be the following (basically shopping 2.0):

• Users could provide own products so that they can earn "coins" or even cash
• Users could earn "coins" by helping others. So everytime someone asks something, and they give a helpful answer and get acknowledged for that, they get a credit
• In other words, it may create a community where customers can earn money themselves - > platform like iTunes

Does anyone please know of a solution of how to achieve any of this?

Many thanks and regards,

Dan

J3.6.2
VM3.0.18

[GJC Web Design]

Would a subscription extension not be a better solution?

[antifragile]

Would a subscription extension not be a better solution?

You mean like Membership Pro? http://joomdonation.com/joomla-extensions/membership-pro-joomla-membership-subscription.html

Will investigate!

Many thanks!

[GJC Web Design]

yes.. something like that .. your selling access.. not things

[antifragile]

yes.. something like that .. your selling access.. not things

Would a subscription extension not be a better solution?

You mean like Membership Pro? http://joomdonation.com/joomla-extensions/membership-pro-joomla-membership-subscription.html

Will investigate!

Many thanks!

I took a look and this type of solution creates a parallel shop and processing system. Given that we have more than 100 products, I also wonder whether it makes sense to create one plan per product. It definetely is a good solution when one offers just a few plans, but not when one has many products.

Great would be a direct integration into Virtuemart. Where one can optionally order hard-copy or direct online view access.

Thanks!