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

[soc_puppet]

Thank you ^_^ I just finished it Sunday morning.

Hm; I'm on a PC, so I'll have to check if any of my programs do that, but it's good to know there are free programs if I'm not set up for it yet.

Those are some nice, straightforward guidelines for pricing and difficulty level assignment; thank you :) Looks like I'm going to have to break out my camera again.

Oh yeah, I should probably look up some of those disclaimers/copyright things and decide what I want mine to say.