Sell a download — a print file, PDF or pattern
Not everything you sell needs wrapping. A print-at-home file, a knitting pattern, a PDF guide, a recording — on a bernard shop these are products like any other (Add a new product to my shop page), except delivery is instant and the postman never gets involved.
How it works
- Upload the file. Use the file upload in your shop — files can't be pasted into the chat itself. It's stored privately with your site, never at a public address.
- Attach it to a product. Tell bernard which product delivers which file. The product becomes digital: no postage is charged on it (How do I charge for postage? applies to physical orders only).
- Buyers get a link with their receipt. After payment, the receipt email carries a personal download link. Behind it, each click fetches the file through a short-lived address that's useless to share around.
The sensible guardrails
Every purchase comes with a download allowance rather than a forever-link — unless you set your own numbers, that's five downloads over thirty days, which is generous for the honest buyer and unhelpful to the person who posts the link in a group chat. Set your own per product: a limit anywhere up to a hundred downloads, an expiry from an hour to a year. You can also record a short licence note with the product — "personal use only, not for resale" — so the terms of sale are written down with the thing itself.
If a genuine buyer runs out of downloads — a lost laptop, a full year later — you'll see their order and can sort them out; nobody is left stranded by a counter.
Before anyone can buy
Digital or not, selling needs your own Stripe account connected — until then the shop shows its wares as "opening soon" (My shop says 'opening soon' — why can't people buy yet?). Teaching rather than selling files? A course delivers worksheets to enrolled students in much the same secure way — that's its own thing, covered in the courses guides.
The prompt
“Make [the product name] a digital download that delivers [the file you've uploaded], with a download limit of [how many downloads] and the link expiring after [how long].”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Connect bernard to your AI over MCP — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI — then paste the prompt above.
Questions people ask
- How does the buyer actually get the file?
- With their receipt. The moment payment goes through, the email includes a personal download link — theirs alone, good for a set number of downloads and a set time. The file itself never sits at a public address anyone could pass around.
- What kinds of file can I sell?
- Documents and PDFs, zip archives, audio, video and images — patterns, print files, recordings, e-books. Anything that runs as a program is refused, which protects your buyers as much as you.
- Can I limit how many times it's downloaded?
- Yes — each product can set its own download limit and expiry; unless you say otherwise, a purchase allows five downloads over thirty days. Attaching or changing a file is a change like any other: it lands as a draft for your approval before buyers see it.