CyberImpersonate

When you sell information online in ebook format, can you stop people from sharing it? You can limit sharing using Clickbank as a payment option. Clickbank provides some measure of protection.

How does it limit access? After creating a sales page to describe the product you link to Clickbank. There is a buy it now button that you can add through Clickbank that will capture the credit card information that the customer puts in. Upon entering valid information and having the necessary funds available, the link to download the product is provided to the customer. This is the only way the download link can be accessed. This provides some protection for you.

However, once a customer has that link, he or she can download your product and share it with everyone. How do you protect yourself even after payment has been received?

One method to protect yourself when you sell information online is to store that information on a website that provides password protection. By keeping your information in this format, this provides a form of protection for you. The way my website is set up is that each customer gets a user name and password unique to them and their account. Since my product is $700 and has a $97 a month subscription, it is important that I protect my information. Otherwise my very valuable content can be shared with the world. I do not go through such great lengths for a $27 ebook that I am selling.

There are some cases, particularly in Christian and other morality based markets where sharing is not as big of a concern. Often you can simply use the honor system to discourage sharing. What you do is note in the ebook that this is not a free product and that if the reader received the product for free to report the person sharing back to you and delete or purchase the product. You might be surprised by how many people will actually report back to you and either delete or purchase the product. Many people are honest about this type of thing.

The only way to protect your information from being shared is using a password or a PDF protection application as other methods are not fool proof and your information can still be shared when you sell information online.

Previously, I explained about the various options at your disposal to protect your products when you sell information. Using a membership website that requires password authentication is one way to do this. You also have the option to use PDF software protection. The choice is yours.

To find pdf protection software, do a search for either pdf protection or ebook protection to find different options. I personally believe that investing in this type of software is a wasted investment. The reason why is because your money and time is better invested in finding ways to sell more copies of your ebook than stopping people from trying to download your ebook for free. The money you spend on that type of software can be better spent on directing traffic to your website. Creating new products is a better way to spend your business building time. A membership site is a much better way to protect your information.

One great approach that I use when I sell information is to sell ebooks at a set price, such as $27 and promote my $19.97 monthly audio membership to those buyers. Only customers for my ebooks learn about my audio club membership; therefore, I know who is paying me. Another program that I offer is a gold membership. With this program, they pay a higher amount than the audio membership, which allows me to purchase my membership software, known as AMember. AMember allows me to track user names and passwords for my customers so I can limit access to only my authorized members.

I am not overly concerned about protecting a $27 ebook because it is just not worth the effort. The price point makes it unnecessary. The way I prefer to handle it is to place a notice in the ebook letting the reader know it is not a free ebook and they should delete it if they downloaded it for free.

As far as my audio club or membership site the security is built in to my membership program. Because it is a continuous expense, or even if instead I made it like a physical or digital product protected by my membership site, I now have the ability to decide who can access it. This is why I recommend membership site software as opposed to ebook protection software.