PayPal - Kill three birds with one stone?

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In the last week alone... I got done by two fraudsters (very possibly the same one, actually).

What happened is that two different stolen paypal IDs were used to buy my WSOs. First time it was two WSOs and the second time (just yesterday) was my newest WSO. Obviously, the owners of the PayPal accounts reversed the transactions and I promptly refunded the money.

This is downright theft. However, for digital products, it isn't so bad since your inventory is not being depleted... neither do the stolen items cost you anything extra.

It still very annoying, though.

Anyway, after the first theft... I started looking into PayPal reversals/chargebacks, as I haven't had to deal with this before.

It seems that another favourite ploy by scammers is to buy a product with Paypal and reverse the transaction on the grounds that the item was not delivered. Personally, I find this more annoying than a stolen Paypal Id, because this is someone buying your product and then refusing to pay, as opposed to someone stealing your product.

It also seems that it is very difficult for sellers to win chargeback cases.

I think I might have come up with a process that might make it easier to prove delivery of your products. I am sharing it with you guys and also asking for your thoughts.

That's the first bird. The second bird involves building a list of buyers.

Not long ago, when someone bought a product from me I would send them to the signup page of my list and tell them to signup so I could send the item they bought. I didn't have a problem, but I read somewhere that a customer could refuse to signup and then report you to Paypal for taking their money and not delivering the product they paid for.

It was also said that PayPal could close down a seller's account for doing this.

This is obviously an extreme case and never happened to me, but I don't want to take any chances, so I stopped using that approach.

The other approach is to deliver the product first, and then ask the customer to signup to the list. I haven't tried this, but I reckon that unless there is a good incentive on offer... the signup rate might be disappointing. I know that I have declined to signup on a number of occassions myself.

The process I am going to share also gets around this situation. That's the second bird.

And here is the process.

1. Create your product.

2. Break out a part (chapter of an ebook, video in a video series etc.) of your product and create a bonus with it. The main product should be able to stand on its own without the bonus, but the information in the bonus should be significant enough that nobody would want to pass it up.

3. Call the bonus a free 'Optional Bonus' and make it clear in your copy that it is not part of the main product.

4. The word 'Optional' indicates that a buyer has to choose to receive the bonus.

5. When people pay for your product, deliver it as usual.

6a. You can either send buyers to the signup page for the optional bonus... after which the autoresponder sends the usual confirmation message OR
6b (if possible) get PayPal to add the buyers email addresses to your autoresponder. The autoresponder will then send them the usual confirmation message.

7. The subject line of your confirmation message should read something like:

Response Required: Please confirm your receipt of XXXXXXXXX report/ebook/video.

I wasn't sure Aweber would approve this subject line, but they did (twice).

8. The body of the confirmation message should read along the lines of:

I received your request for the XXXXXXXXX Optional Bonus.
Before I send it, I need you to do two things:

1. Confirm that you received the XXXXXXXXX report/ebook/video.
2. Confirm your request to join the XXXXXXXXX List.

You can do both by clicking the link below.

9. When a buyer opts in, you then send the Optional Bonus, and you add a new subscriber to your buyers list :-)

What this accomplishes is

1. Get the buyer to actively confirm that they received the main product that they paid for.

2. Get them to signup to your buyers list.

I've tried this with my newest product, and so far I've had a better than 95% success rate (my WSO is only two days old so buyers are still signing up).

I haven't had the chance (and I hope I never do) to prove if getting a buyer to confirm (by email) that they received the product they paid for will improve a seller's chance of winning a chargeback case initiated on the grounds of non-delivery of product.

This takes a bit of extra work, obviously... and I'm not even sure if it is worth it, but I just thought I'd share and ask for feedback.

Thanks.

UPDATE:

This just occured to me... so this is an update. It looks like there is actually a third bird to be killed.

If a Paypal hacker uses a stolen Paypal account to buy your product, and you integrate Paypal with Aweber... Paypal will send the confirmation message to the email address of the legitimate owner of the Paypal account.

In this case do not include a link to a signup page in the initial document you send out after payment is made.

The thief won't receive the confirmation email, so won't be able to confirm and so will not get the bonus. This makes me think that actually the best process might be:

1. Buyer buys through Paypal
2. You send one page document explaining what is going on. Do not include link to signup page.
3. Paypal sends address of Paypal account holder to Aweber
4. Aweber sends out confirmation email to Paypal account holder
5ai. Genuine buyer confirms receipt of package.
5aii.Aweber sends rest of package to buyer
5bi. Scammer doesn't receive confirmation email
5bii. Scammer can't confirm email and doesn't receive stolen products