If you’re a freelancer or do custom work for clients like logo design, modifying video templates, touching-up photos, copywriting, custom music, or any other digital work that requires the delivery of custom files, the brand new Custom Deliverables extension for Easy Digital Downloads is the perfect solution for you. It empowers freelancers to run their own business on their own website – with no middleman.

It’s extremely simple to use and allows your customers to pay up-front using the robust payment environment provided by Easy Digital Downloads. Your customers can order and pay for your custom work right on your website and get their purchase receipt automatically. You’ll save a huge amount of time handling the back-and-forth of invoicing and accepting payments.

All you need to do after receiving a payment is perform the ordered work, and then attach the customized files to the payment record. Your customers will immediately get an email letting them know their files are ready to download.

Additionally, if the client ever deletes that email, they can simply log into their account on your website at any time to re-download them – without needing to bother you. Alternatively, if you have guest mode enabled on your site and clients don’t have user accounts, you can also re-email the files to them with a single click on their Payment Record. This is a huge time saver for any freelancer – no more hunting for old delivered files or managing completed projects.

Two of the other main benefits of using the Custom Deliverables extension are that the files are protected – just like all files are in Easy Digital Downloads – and also tracked. This way, as soon as your customers click to download the files you delivered, you know. You won’t need to guess whether they have downloaded your delivered files.

Another big benefit is that you can upload larger files than if you had sent them through email. Because the files are uploaded and stored on your webhosting account, and your customers get emailed a link to download the protected files (so only they can download them), you can easily deliver larger files. It also integrates with the AmazonS3 extension to allow you to store extremely large files on Amazon’s servers at a very inexpensive cost. If you use Dropbox, you could also use the Dropbox File Store extension to store the customer deliverables as well.

Run your own freelancer marketplace

If you want to set up and manage your own freelancer marketplace website, you can also do that by pairing the Custom Deliverables extension with the Frontend Submissions extension. This way, you can create a website where freelancers sign up to sell custom work. This is a concept similar to websites like fiverr.com or upwork.com. While Frontend Submissions handles the vendors, Custom Deliverables makes it possible for those vendors to attach customized files to orders, right in their Vendor Dashboard.

Once you have Frontend Submissions and Custom Deliverables installed on your WordPress, Vendors can register to become sellers on the Vendor Dashboard page provided by Frontend Submissions. Then, Vendors can create products available for sale. Those products would be the service they are offering (like voice over work, logo design, etc). When a customer comes to your site and chooses the Vendor they wish to have perform the work, they can purchase the product from the Vendor. When the Vendor gets the sales notification email (powered by the Commissions extension), they can begin producing the custom files. Once they have completed the job, they can browse to their orders page in the Vendor Dashboard, upload the customized files, and notify the client by clicking the Notify Customer button.

Almost anyone could benefit from using Custom Deliverables, from people looking to earn a few extra bucks a month as a side hustle freelancer, to entire marketplace businesses which give freelancers a place to offer their services.

Here’s a few examples of the range of businesses that could use Custom Deliverables:

• Photographers delivering things like wedding photos to their clients.
• Video professionals delivering completed video projects to clients.
• Copywriters delivering text to their clients.
• A marketplace of different singers available to sing on promotional materials/commercials.

Whatever your (or your website’s) specialty is, the Custom Deliverables extension makes it easier than ever to be a digital freelancer. Make it happen and start selling customized files today right on your own website!