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Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Benefits 1.2 Guidelines 1.3 Payment 2 Joining Bitmunk 2.1 Registering on Bitmunk 2.2 Verifying your Identity 2.3 Depositing Money 3 Configuring Your Sales Server 3.1 Setting Up Your Sales Server 3.2 Uploading Your Sales Catalog 4 Sales Process 4.1 Intent To Purchase 4.2 Contract Finalization 4.3 Uploading Encrypted Content To Buyer 4.4 Payment Distribution 4.5 Withdrawing Money

Introduction

A quick introduction to Bitmunk from a seller's perspective

Bitmunk is a place for people from all over the world to buy and sell music, television, and movies. This network was made for artists and media fans. Corporations come in second because if it were not for the people that make things, and the people that enjoy things - there really wouldn't be a need for the corporations. Bitmunk is the first legal, copyright-aware, peer-to-peer distribution system in the world - and it puts the people that should be in control (that's you) at the center. Bitmunk doesn't force you to use any Digital Rights Management technology. We support you in re-distributing your files on Bitmunk... support your favorite artists, and get paid doing it. We realize that sounds crazy, but bear with us while we explain how this works. We promise no gimmicks and no catches.

Benefits

What's so great about becoming a seller on Bitmunk?

Anybody can become a seller on Bitmunk, support their favorite artists and make money doing it. That is what is so great about being a seller on Bitmunk - get paid for doing something that you love. By being a seller on Bitmunk, you're helping art thrive by re-distributing it, turning people on to new artists, and ensuring more money goes to the artist while being able to earn some money to pay your bills or buy your favorite music, TV and movies.

Guidelines

How much should I charge for songs and albums on Bitmunk?

As a general rule, you usually want to charge around 20% of what the artist is charging for their royalty. You can charge as much or as little as you want to for re-distributing songs and albums on Bitmunk. Keep in mind that if you charge too much, nobody will buy from you. If you charge too little - your computer will be flooded with purchases and your bandwidth costs could overrun the profit you make from selling files. How much you charge should also be affected by other sellers - if they are only charging 20 cents to re-distribute a song and you're charging 50 cents, they will get most of the sales.

Payment

Sounds great, but what are the risks involved in selling? Am I guaranteed to get paid for every file I sell?

You are guaranteed for every legitimate sale that you perform through your Sales Server. The money appears in your Bitmunk financial account immediately after the sale. Since you are receiving money for a service that you are providing, there is also a down-side to selling. If you try and rip off a buyer (either by selling a bogus file or a very bad quality recording), you can be fined, banned from selling, or banned from the network. So make sure you listen to every file you have before selling them on Bitmunk, any complaint filed against you by a buyer is taken very seriously.

Joining Bitmunk

How does Registration, Verification, and Depositing Money work?'

Before you can sell digital files on Bitmunk, you must first create a user account and validate your real-world identity. Everyone on Bitmunk must do this - it is called a trust metric - and it makes it possible for you to trust other people and vice-versa when buying on Bitmunk. The rest of this section explains things in detail, in reality the process takes about 5 minutes to complete.

To register on Bitmunk, you must first create a user account.

Registering on Bitmunk

When creating a user account, you will be asked for a username and e-mail address. An e-mail will be sent to you with a verification number. You can then use that verification number to verify your e-mail address with Bitmunk and set your password.

Verifying your Identity

Everybody on Bitmunk must validate their identity before they are allowed to buy and sell on the network. The easiest way to validate your identity is by using your credit card or debit card - we will use the name and address listed on your credit card and associate it with your Bitmunk account. Your credit card will not be charged, we just check to make sure you are who you say you are with your bank or credit card company.

Depositing Money

Once you have registered and validated your identity on Bitmunk, you can use any credit or check card to charge your Bitmunk financial account.

Configuring Your Sales Server

Selling digital files via Bitmunk is an easy process. You must download Bitmunk Personal Edition and configure it to your liking. Once the Sales Server is setup, you may search for and select the creative works that you want to sell to other Bitmunk users. You can pick a creative work, associate it with a digital file, set amount that you want each time the song is downloaded and publish your catalog of music for sale on the Internet. When somebody buys a digital file from you, the price that you set for the sale will get deposited into one of your Bitmunk financial accounts. That is the short of it, for those of you that are curious, here is how it works:

Setting Up Your Sales Server

When you're finished installing and configuring the Bitmunk Sales Server, it will appear on the Bitmunk network, but will have no items for sale. You must add creative works to your catalog and upload the catalog to the SVA to start selling digital files and make money.

Uploading Your Sales Catalog

Your catalog is composed of every digital file that you want to sell on Bitmunk, your pricing information and descriptions of your digital files. When you upload your catalog to the SVA, all of the items you are selling immediately become listed on Bitmunk. Whenever anybody does a search for a particular creative work you are selling, your sales server and pricing information pops up for them.

Sales Process

The sales process as sellers see it is a very simple process. In reality, the Bitmunk software is performing hundreds of checks to ensure the proper, legal transfer of digital content. Luckily, the software is very easy to use and you won't see any of the complexities involved in the process.

Intent To Purchase

A buyer will send you an intent to purchase when you have something that they want.

After somebody on the network has found something of yours that they want to purchase, they will send you an intent to purchase. This is the beginning of the contract negotiation phase. After consulting the SVA, your sales server will fill out a purchase contract and send it back to the buyer.

Contract Finalization

The sales server will automatically negotiate a proper contract based on your selling preferences.

The buyer reads the purchase contract you send them and if everything is agreeable, they will upload the purchase contract to the SVA. Your Bitmunk Sales Server will upload the purchase contract to the SVA at the same time. The SVA will check to see if both contracts match and then store the contract in it's database.

Uploading Encrypted Content To Buyer

The next step in the sales process is to upload the digital file to the buyer and the file decryption key to SVA.

Once the final contract has been uploaded to the SVA, the buyer will request the file from your Sales Server. Your sales server will lock the file and send the locked file to the buyer. It will also send the unlock key to the SVA. The SVA will only give the key to the buyer after the buyer has paid you for the file.

Payment Distribution

Once the buyer has downloaded the file, they authorize payment to everyone in the contract. They get the unlock key in return for their authorization of payment and unlock the file you sold them. The SVA distributes payment from their Bitmunk financial account to your Bitmunk financial account (as well as everyone else that was listed in the transaction contract).

Withdrawing Money

You have the option of withdrawing money that you have made via Bitmunk into your bank account.

You can use the money you earn on Bitmunk to buy digital files that you want, or you can transfer the money in your Bitmunk financial account to a banking institution of your choice. It can take anywhere from two days (if you're a highly trusted seller) to one month (if you're new, are selling newly registered creative works, or have complaints logged against you) to withdraw your money to a banking institution.