Professional patterns?

[soc_puppet]

I'd like to start selling some of my original patterns soon, and was hoping I could get some basic information on making a salesworthy pattern/file here. I've been providing some fannish patterns for free at hooked_on_anime for a while now and plan to continue to do so, and while I've learned a bit from that (especially "Include as much information as possible" and "be as specific as possible"), providing free patterns on a web page is a bit different from selling patterns in a .pdf file. Spellchecking everything and including pictures is fairly obvious, but there's details that elude me, and I don't have the funds to buy a large sample of patterns to check against.

Some specific questions I'm looking for answers to:
* How do I even make a .pdf file? Do I have to use Photoshop to do it, or is Adobe Reader up to the task?
* What sort of pictures should I include?
* Should I get someone to beta-test the pattern? If so, how should I compensate them? (A copy of the finalized pattern is a given.)
* How do I determine the level of complexity of a given pattern?
* How do I decide the price of a given pattern?

Any other tips and insights would be welcome, of course.


For the record, patterns I'm planning to offer include: Griffin, European-style dragon, Asian-style dragon, and Dachshund, just for a start.

Comments

[cesy]

The free version of Adobe Reader won't make PDFs, though the professional one will. You can also get CutePDF or similar apps for free, or the latest versions of Word or Photoshop will save to PDF.

[soc_puppet]

Cool, thanks; I'll probably be taking a look for one of those free programs, then.