Should I make documentation publicly available? your opinion please

What’s your opinion on making documentation for the items you sell publicly available?

Currently i include documentation with the downloaded main file from Envato but from the support requests I receive I noticed that a lot of buyers don’t read it, or don’t know that it exits or where they can find it (even if its clearly in a folder called Documentation). I am now thinking that maybe I should upload it and post a link on the Item’s sale page.

What do you think?

No. Definitely no. A lot of people use pirated items and they will have easy and direct access to the documentation and this will affect your sales.

If buyers don’t read the documentation, maybe the documentation isn’t attractive or is too much or too less information. Maybe an idea for you would be to make video tutorials, most people love them as nowadays the time is important and not everybody has time to read long texts (like mine here for instance :smiley: )

If someone bought my items and shared them it means the documentation was shared with them though right?

I like the video idea even though a lot of the requests I receive are based on hosting issues which can be easily resolved. Maybe I’ll just offer an online FAQ rather than full docs.

I make my documentation available on-line, and I do link it in my item descriptions.
I know as a buyer, being able to see the documentation before I buy is a HUGE plus in my book, and I am more inclined to buy.

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I would say yes. I have all my documentations available and it’s easy to keep them up to date. If people steal your work they wouldn’t buy it just because they can’t access the docs - they just download a different item.

I always like to focus more on honest buyers and give them as less blockades as possible instead of fighting agains the others.

If you have a good product you will get your sales. People pay for quality and a good up-to-date documentation is a part of it.

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