Sell Information Online And Protect Your Ebooks
One challenge when you sell information online is how easy it can be shared. Utilizing Clickbank is one way you can limit this. The payment processor is designed to limit unauthorized access at the point of payment.
How does Clickbank protect you? You create a sales page to market the ebook that you are selling. The person buying it clicks on the buy link on your sales page and is promoted by Clickbank to enter payment information. If the information entered results in a payment being made, Clickbank sends the customer to your download page. If not, Clickbank blocks them. Therefore they can only get to your page if they pay for your product.
What happens after the customer pays for the ebook and downloads it to their computer? There is nothing that prevents that customer from sharing your ebook with everyone because the PDF document can be easily shared.
One possible solution when you sell information online is to use a password protection membership website to control distribution of the ebook. Instead of placing the information in a PDF, you keep it on one of these websites. When someone accesses a product that I have on one of these websites, they need to enter their user name and password and if there is a problem with payment they cannot see the information. I have a main course that costs $700 and has a $97 monthly subscription. That is not something I want being distributed for free. On the other hand, I might not care as much for a $27 ebook.
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.
Simply put, unless you protect the information itself and not just at the point of payment, customers can share your information with anyone that they want to share it with when you sell information online.
