Changes

This morning’s blog post was supposed to be a different blog post.  Unfortunately, due to the time change and the rain outside, it’s really dark this morning.  Since photos are completely out at the moment, you can’t see what I finished until tomorrow (I’ll get pictures later today, when the sun is up), so I’ll discuss what I was going to discuss tomorrow (it doesn’t need pictures).

When I first started writing knitting patterns, I used a service called Payloadz.  Once a buyer’s payment cleared PayPal, Payloadz would email a download link for the pattern file.  It’s all automated, so a buyer didn’t have to wait for me to log on and send the pattern, and while there were occasional glitches (the Internet doesn’t always work perfectly), 99.9% of the time it worked really well.  It also enabled additional downloads (with my permission) in case the buyer lost the file due to computer issues.

Then Ravelry came on the scene.  When Ravelry started doing pattern sales, I signed up there as well to give myself additional exposure.  With Ravelry’s library feature, anytime someone buys a pattern, a copy is stored in their library, so if there is an unfortunate kitten/coffee/laptop incident, once you can log in to Ravelry again, you can download the file from your library without waiting for my permission.  From a pattern buyers point of view it is slightly more convenient than the Payloadz system if you have a Ravelry account (they’re free).

For a while, I had links to both Payloadz and Ravelry on my pattern pages, but the last few patterns, I’ve only sold through Ravelry, and so far, no one has even mentioned it.

The reason I’m bringing all this up now, is because I’m planning to remove all of the Payloadz links from the pattern pages.  Payloadz charges me more than Ravelry does, and they aren’t quite as convenient in the longterm for the pattern buyer.  I will not close the Payloadz account, because previous purchasers through that service can still request downloads, and I’ll be happy to help out when that’s necessary.  I wanted to explain my thinking on this change before I started actually making the changes, so if anyone had any questions or concerns, they could ask them.  I think this will be a win-win for both me (cheaper fees, more streamlined for record keeping) and my customers (files stored on Ravelry for immediate re-downloading).

If you don’t have a Ravelry account, please don’t panic!  You can still buy patterns there, and if you ever do set up an account, assuming you use the same email address you used when purchasing patterns, any patterns you’ve purchased previously will be added to your library.  Also, if you haven’t joined Ravelry because it seems overwhelming, remember, you can use it as much or as little as you want to.  You could use it just to store patterns and never get into the social chatter of the groups.  There are a lot of people there that just use Ravelry for the patterns.

I won’t start making any of these changes for at least a week, so if you have any questions or concerns about this, please leave a comment and I’ll address those later this week.

TL;DR - I will be changing pattern sales platforms exclusively to Ravelry, but those that purchased through Payloadz previously, will still be able to request additional downloads when they need them.