- Discover the sales options for downloadable products and why DLGuard has helped thousands start their own EBook business.
- Learn how DLGuard secures download links, provides a customizable shopping cart and integrates with the major payment systems.
- Take control of offering your own promotional coupons, creating membership areas and automatic mailing lists sign-ups.
- Stay risk-free with a 60-day money back guarantee.
In this review I shall look at the options available to sell digital downloads and then go into the details of the option I have used since 2007.
What are the options?
There are basically three ways of selling ebooks online (or any digital product for that matter; software/music/etc) with varying control, security and cost implications, as follows:
- Third Party Websites. Once you have a book written and exported it to PDF file format you upload it to a distributors website who then control the selling of your book in return for a commission on each sale. Dealing with Paypal/Clickbank to process payments is handled by the seller. You have no control over the product marketing on their site or on capturing purchaser’s details. Security of downloads is under the control of the vendor (for example, whether the download links have a time limit). Long term, you cannot build up your ebook business with a membership listing of customers so you miss out on potential loyalty purchases.
- Password Protected Folders. This is an old-school approach whereby you create a shared folder on your web server, make it password protected then send the purchaser details of the password and where to locate the digital product for download. On the upside, there is no cost involved. On the downside, the security is weak as the password can be shared with multiple people and there is the overhead of administration (setting up passwords for each customer).
- Sales Management Tools. This approach involves using sales applications on your own server that look after the checkout process, securing download links & passwords, capturing mailing list sign-ups and allowing the creation of membership sites/products. After the cost of the product, your only cost on each sale is the commission to Paypal/Clickbank/whomever for the handling of the payment. The only overhead is the application setup and administration – which in truth is well documented and as simple as using MS Word or Winzip.
If you intend expanding your ebook business to sell several digital products online then choosing a sales management tool is the best option. The remainder of this article is a DLGuard review as this is my choice of digital download sales tool. The review covers my 18 months of profitable use of this product.
What is DLGuard?
DLGuard is a software solution for selling digital downloads in a secure manner (the ‘DL’ stands for download). In its 6 years of production it has grown into a fully featured product. It consists of scripts that cover all the functionality required of a sales management tool – adding inventory, providing onsite purchase links, interfaces with payment systems, along with other extras.
It supports the three main methods of checkout sale on the internet – single item sales (which can include bonus products if you so wish), multiple item sales and membership websites. Moreover, payment processing is fully integrated with all the main providers – PayPal, ClickBank, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, WorldPay, AlertPay, Ebay, PayDotCom, E-Gold, 1ShoppingCart, E-Bullion, LinkPoint and PagSeguro.
Note: The focus of this article is using DLGuard for securely automating sales in an ebook business; But it is worth highlighting that DLGuard is a sales tool that will work just as well with any type of digital product – music files/software/PDF files/etc.
You start by writing ebooks using your preferred word processor application and exporting them in the PDF file format. You then add the PDF to your inventory of digital products in DLGuard (you can choose to sell eBooks, music, images, software, etc. or any combination you wish). The inventory submission page lets you configure the security options of the download link and design the emails it will automatically send out to purchasers.
DLGuard provides the scripts/code for placing ‘buy now’ type links on your web pages. Customers clicking on these links are brought through to the checkout page (this page is also customizable to suit your own web site’s design).
Once payment processing is complete, the customer receives an automated email with a secure download link to their purchase. There are safeguards on these links to set time limits and maximum download attempts to avoid digital theft. In addition, security features are in place to secure your ‘thank you’ & ‘download’ pages should Google list them, inadvertently opening them up to being used by any Google user.
Once you are selling ebooks online to a steady stream of customers, you will wish to start using viewing customer tracking & reporting features in DLGuard to assess conversion rates and analyze customers (to the point where you can view customer IP addresses & emails to check for odd sales/returns patterns – e.g. a customer constantly returning a product for a refund which is a sure sign they are copying the book and infringing your copyright).
The list of extras goes on and on so I’ll finish with two favorites: The automatic auto-responder sign-up and promotional coupons. The auto-responder is simple to setup and allows you to start building up your mailing list of customers. Next time you have a new product out you can contact these customers direct. It’s a fact that loyalty customers can help long term in providing consistent long term sales. The promotion coupons (like the ones you see in the checkout process for Amazon and most major sites that sell ebooks online) can be configured as part of your shopping process too. Its nice to marry the promo coupons up with your mailing list of customers to offer some early release specials.
You can also consider your purchase completely risk-free, since, if for any reason you’re not happy with the product, then simply let DLGuard know within 60 Days of purchase and you’ll receive a 100% refund.
Does DLGuard actually work?
Yes it does – to put it simply!
I’ve been using it since early 2007 to great effect selling eBooks online, plug-in software applications (I sell software online for music production apps) and music samples (unique .wav or .aif files of ambient noises that I construct from scratch). I have three separate sites all pointed to my single sales application. Each sell digital downloads securely from the one DLGuard installation.
The installation steps (10 simple steps) for the tool were a piece of cake to execute and adding files to the inventory was simplicity itself. It integrated in with my sites with great ease and instantly started compiling my new sign-up list of customers (especially useful for selling music samples). In hindsight, DLGuards ability to converse with the major payment processing players (Paypal, etc.) was not something I had originally considered necessary, but since looking at the sales reports I can now see how I’d have missed out on a lot of sales if I’d gone with a ‘paypal-support-only’ product.
In the coming months, I’ll expand out my sites with membership areas using DLGuard and provide some value-added books in PDF format detailing my approach to sound production and how to sell software online. It’s nice to know that the product can handle more advanced functionality that can benefit a website as it grows.
If I had gone with selling via an online distributor, then I’d have lost out the creation of my sign-up lists. I’d also have been hit with their commissions on each sale. I did try using another similar product, aMember, but found DLGuard much easier to setup and use on a day-to-day basis.
The only ‘gotcha’ during the period of use has been the fact that DLGuard has a two domain license limit (i.e. you may use it on two website domains). The workarounds for this is to either buy more licenses or alternately create a single sales domain and direct your ‘buy-now’ links and buttons hyper-links to this one domain.
For screenshots, testimonials and system requirements, click here to learn more.
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