Nowadays, everybody likes to shop online. You can get pretty much everything just with a few clicks on your computer. It’s really comfortable for the customers which is why this is also a lucrative business for the sellers.

Selling mp3 is a good option for you if you are planning to launch an online mp3 store. One good advantage of this is it’s a digital product. As soon as the users purchase mp3s they get the download links. So you don’t have to worry about shipping or delivering the products to the customers.Recently, after some research on different WordPress shopping cart plugins I found a quick way to setup a mp3 store. Basically, it’s a tutorial on setting up a mp3 store on a WordPress site. You need to get the following WordPress plugins for this tutorial-

Required Plugins

• WP eStore – It allows you to sell digital products securely from your website.
• Audio Player – A mp3 player which you can use to play the sample mp3s.
• Extra eStore Shortcodes – A free plugin which enhances the features of eStore e.g. different fancy displays of products.

Once you upload and install all the plugins please follow the step by step instructions below:

1.  Go to Categories under eStore.

2. This is how the category menu looks like:

3. Enter a name in the Category Name field e.g. My_Mp3_1. Now click on the Save Category button to create the category.

4. You should be able to see a Category ID for the category you just created at the bottom. Copy this ID to a notepad, in case you forget (you can always come back to Categories to have a look at the ID though). You will have to use this ID in the shortcode later.

5. Now go to Add/Edit Products under eStore.

6. We are going to add a product here (by entering name, price, download link etc.). The Add/Edit Products menu will look like this-

7. First, you need to enter the name and price of the mp3. For example:

Product Name: On_the_wing-Owl_City

Product Price: 1.50 (Please don’t use any currency symbol here. You can specify it in the General Settings of the plugin. Also make sure that you enter the price to two decimal places e.g. 1.00 , 3.00 )

8. Before you go to the next step you might want to upload a demo version of the actual mp3 file (Probably a duration of 10-15 second. It’s totally up to you) . So please open your FTP client (I personally use FileZilla) and connect to the server. You can also use the WordPress Media Uploader to upload the file but I’d recommend you to have a dedicated folder for the demo mp3s. This way it will be easier for you to manage the files later. Copy the URL of the demo mp3 to a notepad for now.

9. Now You can go to the Additional Product Details section. There is a field named Product Description where you need to enter the following shortcode:

Replace the URL with the URL of the demo mp3 you just uploaded. For example :

You can see how the Product Description field looks like:

10. Now please move to the Thumbnail Image URL field Where you need to specify a thumbnail image URL for the mp3. A thumbnail of 150×150 pixels would be nice for the display. For example:

11. In the Product Category field, don’t forget to check the box next to the category (In this case, it’s My_Mp3_1) this product belongs to.

12. There is also a field name Button Image URL where you can specify an Add to Cart type button image.

for example:

You can access some button images from the images directory of the eStore which will be at -

13. Now please go to the Additional Product Details section. You can upload the full version of the mp3 if you haven’t uploaded it yet. Copy the URL of the uploaded file and paste in the Digital Product URL field. For example:

http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/mp3/on-the-wing.mp3

You need to also check the Downloadable box which will allows the plugin to deliver the mp3 in an encrypted download link. It means the customers won’t know the actual URL of the mp3 while they download.

14. Click the Save Product button at the bottom of the page to save the product details.

You will see a yellow message at the top saying that a product has been added. This way you can add as many products as you want. I added four products for this tutorial. If you are done with configuring the products you can now move to the next step where I will show how you can display the products on a page/post.

15. Please create a new post/page and place the following shortcode on that page -

Where id is the Category ID (in this case we are using the ID of My_Mp3_1 category which is 1) and style is the fancy display number (here we are going to show the products using fancy display 1)

16. Now place the following shortcode after that -

This shortcode will show the items in the cart when added (You can also place the widget named WP Cart for Digital Products on the sidebar to display the shopping cart. You can find it in the Widgets menu)

Now if you view the page you will see all the mp3s (from category My_Mp3_1) in the following style -

Captains_and_cruise_ships-Owl_city

You need to have the Audio Player Plugin installed to use this shortcode
Price: $1.50

Fireflies-Owl_City

You need to have the Audio Player Plugin installed to use this shortcode
Price: $1.50

On_the_wing-owl_city

You need to have the Audio Player Plugin installed to use this shortcode
Price: $1.50

Whats_Left_Of_Me-Nick_Lachey

You need to have the Audio Player Plugin installed to use this shortcode
Price: $1.50

If you are interested please get the following WordPress plugins from here -

• WP eStore
• Audio Player
• Extra eStore Shortcodes

Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions.