The Alternative Broadcasting Online News Station

If you sell digital products online, you are probably already familiar with the growing problem of your e-books, etc. being stolen. This is how it works and how you can prevent it.

A visitor to your site buys your product; for example an e-book. Soon after downloading her purchase, she visits a forum and supplies the link to the page containing your download information to all the members. Before you know it, thousands of people are downloading your e-book! These people are stealing from you and you are unaware of your loss!

Many of these would have bought your e-book, so you could have lost hundreds of dollars!

Or take another case. You set up your sales page using PayPal. Now your simple PayPal button script is visible on your sales page if someone bothers to “View Source”. They can see where to download from and bypass the Payment page. Now PayPal will let you encrypt the button so only gobbledygook shows up in the source. But I have found a problem in that you cannot include redirect and thankyou pages inside that script, so you can force people to pay you, but then the supply of their goods is messy and involves email back and forth and so on.

In another case I have seen, the PayPal page was encrypted to prevent access to a download page, but the payment amount could be changed, so an expensive item could be purchased for 1 cent!

Fortunately, there are ways to prevent this download theft. The simplest method which I have come across recently involves using a third party that provides an encrypted script that secures your PayPal or other payment links and download information that you copy onto your website.

All your downloads are managed using a secure and automated process, There is no need to confirm orders and send download links to customers in email manually. On top of this, the system will send you a confirmation email each time a successful buyer downloads your products. This is excellent for your record keeping; you will know how many people actually downloaded your products. Your confirmed customers can download the product within minutes of ordering it! They don’t have to wait for you to send them emails to receive a download link or go to page after page to confirm their order. Just 1 step for them!

There are two such systems which I have investigated, but I am not affiliated with either. One is provided by businessbazee.com This system is free to use and easy to set up. What they will do is give you an ID and a successful payment page URL which your customers will see when they have paid for your products at PayPal. This is a specially designed page that has the potential to check who is on the page and then display content accordingly.

If someone just arrives at your payment page without paying, it will display in one way If someone just paid at PayPal for something you are selling, it displays something else. Then it confirms the order and sends the appropriate download information to the buyer and a notification email to you that this particular person just downloaded your product. Best part it’s all free. Get complete details at businessbazee.com.

The other is a more comprehensive service provided by Sam Stephens called DLGuard. This is a powerful, script that you simply upload to your website.

DLGuard supports the three types, or methods, of sale on the internet: single item sales (including bonus products), multiple item sales and membership websites It also has the advantage of being fully integrated with PayPal, ClickBank, 2Checkout, Stormpay, PayDotCom, Ebay, EA Script and even tracks your free product downloads.

This service protects your products from the most common forms of theft:

1. Prevents download link sharing, as in our forum example referred to earlier. Each download link can have a expiring time limit as well as a maximum number of download attempts. This means that you can give your customer, for example, 2 hours to download your product with a maximum of 3 download attempts. Even if your customer posted their own real download link on a public forum, the link would become useless before real damage is done. If your real customer doesn’t have time to download their product within this time frame then you can easily reset their timer or download count. You can make your security as tight or as loose as you see fit for your customers.

2. Ignores insecure thankyou/download pages: A common form of “hacking” is by simply searching for insecure download pages via popular search engines. The term hacking is used loosely, as there is no skill in searching for insecure download pages, but the effect can still be devastating. You could lose thousands of dollars. Google includes PDF files in its search results.

If your download page or e-book is not secure, then people could be actually READING your e-book without even realising they’re stealing your product. With the download guard in place, even if the whole world knows the URL of your thankyou page, they won’t be able to download your products. The system checks to make sure a successful payment has been made before allowing access to the download area.

Marketing tests and successful business owners tell us time and again that to maximise profits you need to create a loyal customer list. This can be difficult or uneconomical by using customer signup forms as a large percentage of your customers won’t signup. First you need to convince them to buy your product and then you need to convince them to signup to your mailing list As part of the download guard, they automatically add your customers to your mailing list after a sale is made and keep tracking records and file reports for you on who has downloaded your product. The DLGuard services is not free, but is affordable and well supported if the users forum is any indication.

What are your alternatives?

* Keep changing the location of the files every month or so, as part of your website maintenance.

* Keep renaming your download page frequently.

* Provide download from a different domain.

* Use encrypted pages that prevent right clicks and drop-down menus from revealing source code

* Do not link to your download pages from any other page and manually provide the site to your paying customer.

* Keep your download page more than 3 levels down in your web space. (Like domain/directory1/directory2/directory3/file). This may prevent search engines from reaching your files as they mostly scan only 2 levels down.

* Send your e-books with Acrobat pdf

If deciding to use .pdf files, you could make all of your material data image files which are called into the file from a protected web location. I am aware that Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Pro has collaboration features available, which can be used in conjunction with document encryption and password-locked features. Using the collaboration features, you could maintain an access log, sort of like a check-in/check-out process for the file(s). Remember if using any of the “product protectors” available on the market for wrapping the pdf file(s), you are in effect making them non-MAC friendly, as they become .exe files.

Remember you may not prevent theft entirely; you cannot prevent anyone from sending your product to a friend or reselling it on their own site illegally, though most people will not go that far and there are remedies you can take with their web hosting service and legal action.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to E-Commerce

When it comes to making fine chocolates, the makers of the best know it all starts with a simple bean. But, how does chocolate go from a bean to what is considered one of the best dessert confections in the world?

It starts with the cacao. The seed, or bean, from this fruit bearing tree must undergo some serious processing to become chocolate. The trick in making fine chocolate is proper processing of cacao’s beans from the very start.

Cacaos are harvested by hand. Growers hand cut the fruit, generally using machetes in the process. This is the very first step in creating the finest of chocolates. Once the fruits of cacaos are gathered, it is opened and the beans and the cacaos pulp is removed.

The next step in the creation of finer chocolates is the fermentation process. This can take five to six days during which time the fruit’s natural sugars create an alcohol. Cacao’s pulp turns to a liquid during this process and drains away. Chocolate’s deep brown color is generated during this process.

Once fermentation is completed on cacaos, the beans must be dried to continue the chocolate making process. Considering the climes in which cacaos grow, it should be of no surprise the drying method of choice is the sun for natural chocolate creation. Drying of cacaos takes about two weeks. In come cases, high volume producers use hot air to dry chocolate beans, but this is not the best method for creating a fine end product.

With drying completed, the chocolate creation process continues with roasting. This step, much like it is in the creation of coffee, is vital. For a finer chocolate to be created, roasting must take place around 210 degrees Fahrenheit. This step can take a few minutes or just over an hour. It gives cacaos a rich aroma and adds to the chocolate flavor. Roasting is critical and requires constant supervision for a fine outcome. Low temperature roasting will net a chocolate bean that’s fruity. Longer roasting of cacaos increases bitterness.

Tedious filtering is the next step in chocolate creation. Called winnowing, this is when cacaos are shelled and made ready for grinding, which is another essential step in the chocolate creation process.

Creating the finest in chocolates, is a lot harder than it seems. From bean to bar, each step along the way requires patience and expertise.

Want to learn more about the fascinating history of chocolate? Visit us at http://www.chocolate-gourmet-gifts.com

George Murray is the President of Centric Promotions, Inc. Learn more about the history of chocolate and view an assortment of luxury chocolates and chocolate gifts by visiting us at: http://www.chocolate-gourmet-gifts.com

Did you know that contacts are the bread of career life? In times of change, information and relationships are a source of power. Savvy networking will help you to tap into this power to grow your business and your career.

Savvy networking is a systematic process of establishing and maintaining relationships for seeking out information and resources in order to accomplish specific goals. Its focus is on the building of rapport and long term interactions rather than quick, short-term connections of ‘here today gone tomorrow’. Its purpose is to access all kinds of information and a wide variety of resources in order to achieve one’s individual career goals as well as one’s team or work group’s objectives.

Some of you may have a negative opinion of networking. Some of you may think it is a selfish or egotistical activity with an emphasis on, “What can this person do for me?” However, savvy networking is not only committed to the meeting of your goals but also must be concerned with the following:

“How can I specifically be of help to this other person or team? What is it that I can give? What kinds of information do I have access to? Or what kinds of support can I provide?”

Reciprocity is the key. It is the getting of what you need to achieve your goals or perform your job effectively as well as the giving to others what they need in order to achieve their goals or do their job more effectively.

In savvy networking, peer relationships are more important than ever given the rise of team based organizations. As the leader of these work or project teams, your challenge is that you may not have the formal authority over people whose support you need. For example, you may be tasked with accomplishing the following:

Your ability to get the job done hinges first on your success in cultivating, mobilizing, and maintaining relationships with others. Second, it is dependent on your ability to influence or gain cooperation from these people to accomplish specific goals.

Stephen Covey, in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, states: “Interdependence, not independence, is the new watch word.” Forget being the Lone Ranger! Connect for success. Start building dynamic networks and relationships.

Marcia Zidle, the ‘people smarts’ coach, works with business leaders to quickly solve their people management headaches so they can concentrate on their #1 job ­ to grow and increase profits. She offers free help through Leadership Briefing, a weekly e-newsletter with practical tips on leadership style, employee motivation, recruitment and retention and relationship management. Subscribe by going to
http://leadershiphooks.com/ and get the bonus report “61 Leadership Time Savers and Life Savers”. Marcia is the author of the What Really Works Handbooks ­ resources for managers on the front line and the Power-by-the-Hour programs ­ fast, convenient, real life, affordable courses for leadership and staff development. She is available for media interviews, conference presentations and panel discussions on the hottest issues affecting the workplace today. Contact Marcia at 800-971-7619.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Remind us that we will be blessed if we don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.

Help us to, instead, delight in the law of the Lord, and meditate on it day and night.

Then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever we do will prosper.

In the name of Jesus we pray,
Amen

(Psalm 1:1-3 NIV)
Prayer © 2004 http://www.geocities.com/oldfashionedhomemaking/

About the Author

A woman who believes that scripture and prayer are the most powerful tools that we have because God’s power is unlimited.