Sell geospatial data online, step by step

Why sell geospatial data online

Many producers still sell their data by email: a customer writes in, someone prepares an extract, sends a quote, waits for the bank transfer, then uploads an archive. Every sale takes hours, customers wait for days, and nobody really knows which data exists.

An online store flips that logic: the customer searches, sees a preview, picks an area and pays; access opens right away. The producer only has to produce and update the data. But the store has to understand what geospatial data is: an extent, metadata, formats and services.

Step 1: catalog before you sell

You cannot sell what people cannot find. The foundation of online sales is a data catalog: each dataset gets its own record, with a clear title, an abstract, an extent, a date, a source, a coordinate system and keywords. Standards-based metadata also lets national portals and search engines index your data.

• One record per dataset, map or document.
• Search by keyword, theme and area.
• A map preview, to judge coverage and quality.
• A status for each dataset: free, view only, restricted to certain accounts, or for sale.

To choose the catalog software itself, read our comparison GeoNode, CKAN, GeoNetwork or ArcGIS Hub.

Step 2: show without giving away

This is the trickiest part. A standard catalog is built to share: the record, the attributes and the download are all open. To sell, you must separate what a visitor sees from what a buyer receives.

• The preview stays public: an image of the data, its extent, its descriptive record.
• Attributes and files are reserved for buyers, including in map services that could expose them.
• Access is time-bound: a WMS or WFS subscription ends when the purchased period ends.

This separation must hold everywhere, not just on the record page. Data protected on the website but served openly by a public WFS service can still be downloaded by anyone who knows the service address. That is why protection must be set at the level of the map server itself, and checked with an account that has bought nothing. Run that check again whenever you add a new dataset or change its status, because one misconfigured layer is enough to give away a product you meant to sell.

Preparing your data before putting it on sale

A store only sells well when the data is ready to use. Before opening sales, each dataset deserves a short preparation that prevents most complaints and refund requests.

• A clear license: what buyers may do (internal use, publication, resale) and what they may not, written in plain language on the record.
• Common formats: GeoPackage or Shapefile for vectors, GeoTIFF for rasters; these are the formats every GIS application opens.
• A stated coordinate system: buyers must know, without guessing, which projection they receive.
• An update date: dated data inspires trust; undated data makes people hesitate.
• A simple price list: per full dataset, per area for an extract, per period for WMS or WFS access. Too many options discourage buying.
• A well-chosen preview: sharp enough to judge quality, but not enough to rebuild the data.

Start with the few datasets in highest demand rather than your whole collection. The first sales will tell you which formats, areas and periods your customers are really looking for.

Step 3: choose how to sell

Customers do not all need the same thing. A town wants only its own area, a consultancy wants the full dataset, an application wants a live feed. Offering several ways to buy widens your customer base.

Step 4: get paid by card and Mobile Money

Payment should match your customers' habits. In many African countries, Mobile Money is a common payment method, often more so than bank cards. A store that accepts only cards loses some of its buyers.

A good payment flow emails the invoice, opens access as soon as payment is confirmed, and sends the money straight to the seller's accounts, not to an intermediary's. It should also keep a clear record of each sale, so that you can answer a customer who lost an invoice, reconcile your accounts at the end of the month and see at a glance which datasets sell and which do not. Those figures are what tell you where to invest your next production effort.

Setting your prices and licenses

Pricing geospatial data is not like pricing a physical product. Copying it costs almost nothing, but producing it took field campaigns, imagery, hours of digitizing and quality control. Most producers therefore combine three approaches: recover part of the production cost, align with the value the customer gets from the data, and stay affordable for small buyers.

The license matters as much as the price. It states what buyers may do with the data: use it internally, build it into a product they resell, publish it on a public map, share it with a subcontractor. A vague license invites misunderstandings; an overly restrictive one discourages purchases. Write it in plain sentences, show it on the record before payment, and use the same license for every dataset in the same family.

• Separate access from ownership. Buyers get a right to use the data, not ownership of it; say so clearly.
• Specify the duration. A download often grants an open-ended right, while WMS or WFS access is limited to the period paid for.
• State the required attribution. Many producers require their name on any map made with their data.
• Plan for updates. Is a new edition of the dataset included, offered at a discount, or sold again?

This guide is not legal advice. Rules on publishing public-sector data, protecting personal data and taxing online sales vary from country to country: have your terms of sale reviewed by a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

Who sells geospatial data, and what they sell

Data producers have neither the same customers nor the same constraints. Here are the most common situations, and the way of selling that suits each best.

In all these cases, a single platform can mix free and paid data. Giving away part of your collection attracts visitors, shows the quality of your work and paves the way for sales of more detailed or more recent datasets. Free data also earns links from other websites and citations in reports, which in turn bring new visitors to the paid datasets.

A public agency, for example, can open its administrative boundaries and base map for free, reserve its detailed data for partner departments' accounts, and sell high-resolution extracts to private companies. All three statuses live side by side in the same catalog, and each visitor sees what concerns them. This layered approach also helps public producers reconcile two goals that often seem to conflict: an open data policy on one side, and the need to fund the upkeep of costly datasets on the other.

Common mistakes when selling geospatial data

• Putting everything on sale at once. A catalog of hundreds of incomplete records inspires less trust than twenty careful ones. Start small, then expand.
• Forgetting the map services. Protecting the download button is not enough if the same layer stays open over WMS or WFS. Check every service with an account that has bought nothing.
• An overly generous preview. A full-resolution preview, or a visible attribute table, lets people rebuild the data without paying.
• A price with no context. Visitors must understand what they are paying for: area, period, format. An unexplained amount drives them away.
• The wrong payment methods. Offering only bank cards where customers mostly pay by Mobile Money shuts out part of them.
• No sales tracking. Without a sales report per dataset, you cannot tell which datasets deserve an update or a price cut.
• Data that is never updated. Data on sale must stay dated and maintained; otherwise customers notice quickly, and do not come back.

Most of these mistakes can be fixed without any technical work: they mainly require putting yourself in the buyer's shoes. Before opening the store, ask a colleague outside the project to find, understand and buy a dataset without help; where they hesitate shows you what needs to be made clearer.

Selling geospatial data with LizPack Catalogue

LizPack Catalogue is built on GeoNode and GeoServer, two well-known open source projects. LizPack, an open source geospatial infrastructure, did not write them: it installs and maintains them, and adds the store, protection for data on sale, and branding in your colors.

• A catalog of datasets, maps and documents, with standards-based metadata, search and a map preview.
• A store: full dataset download, extract for a chosen area, WMS and WFS access for a period, printable PDF map.
• Payment by bank card and Mobile Money, invoice by email, access opened as soon as payment clears; payments go to your own merchant accounts.
• Data on sale shows only its preview: its attributes and files are reserved for buyers.
• Multiple sellers: your partners publish and sell their own data, each in their own space, with their own sales tracking.
• On your servers, if your data must not leave your premises, or hosted and maintained by LizPack.

The multiple-sellers feature enables a particular use: a shared platform for a network of producers. A ministry, a professional association or a consortium can host its members' data, each publishing and selling in their own space with their own sales tracking, behind a single storefront for buyers.

1. A conversation: your data, what you want to sell, your payment methods, and where the catalog should run.
2. The quote: installation, branding in your colors, migration of your data and maintenance.
3. Setup: the catalog is deployed on your servers or on LizPack's, and your first datasets are published.
4. Selling: your customers buy online, and you track sales from your own space.

Each dataset can be free, view only, restricted to certain accounts or for sale, so you can open the catalog with free data and turn on sales gradually.

Pricing is by quote: it depends on the hosting option, your data volume, branding and maintenance. If your data must stay inside your infrastructure, also read hosting your GIS on your own servers.

Frequently asked questions