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How to protect your products online!

by Regional Warrior
19 replies
After some research I have found what I think may be an answer to the problem of securing your digital product online.

if you go to SoftLocker (No Affiliate link) there specialty is protection of digital products online.

If this has been posted before my apologies , if not hope this may help anyone who has concerns with Protection Theft

Jason
#online #products #protect
  • Profile picture of the author Irnes Jakupovic
    After a lot of discussion on this topic over the years I believe the consensus is to not protect your products with any special kind of software.
    You see we have no way of stopping these thieves, once a book or other product is in their possession there is ALWAYS a way to break the lock or extract the information somehow. All your doing is making it difficult on your customers.
    A lot of people just take the extra exposure on these blackhat sites as way to really get your name out there some more. Some add affiliate links in their products to recoup some costs but this has been controversial also.
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    • Profile picture of the author Regional Warrior
      Originally Posted by Irnes Jakupovic View Post

      After a lot of discussion on this topic over the years I believe the consensus is to not protect your products with any special kind of software.
      You see we have no way of stopping these thieves, once a book or other product is in their possession there is ALWAYS a way to break the lock or extract the information somehow. All your doing is making it difficult on your customers.
      A lot of people just take the extra exposure on these BlueFart sites as way to really get your name out there some more. Some add affiliate links in their products to recoup some costs but this has been controversial also.
      Sorry I have do disagree with you here, may before it was a hassle but now you have to find some way of keeping the product out of
      Illegal sites and protect your product
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      • Profile picture of the author Tsnyder
        Originally Posted by Jason P Syron View Post

        Sorry I have do disagree with you here, may before it was a hassle but now you have to find some way of keeping the product out of
        Illegal sites and protect your product
        Bad news... there is no guaranteed way to do that. I don't care
        how secure someone thinks their solution is there are people who
        can hack it in a minute...

        In fact, SoftLocker says so on their site...

        "There is no such thing as a product that can't be cracked: when you run
        computer code it is visible to the operating system and can potentially be cracked."

        Tsnyder
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        If you knew what I know you'd be doing what I do...
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    • Profile picture of the author hotlinkz
      I think it's more a matter of weighing the cost of protection against the cost of potential loss. SoftLocker and similar protection schemes do avert most theives (but not all).

      I would definitely rather pay $12 to $20 a month to protect $37+ products.

      As an example...

      $144 - $240 a year for protection compared to $740+ for each 20 units stolen. Believe me, far more than 20 units can get siphoned off in 20 minutes or less once your products find their way to the "free-for-all" black hat hacker sites.

      If you produce popular, sought-after products, I think this type protection scheme is a viable and prudent option. In any case, these solutions do more to lessen the impact of loss, but they don't provide a guarantee against all loss.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tsnyder
        Originally Posted by hotlinkz View Post

        I think it's more a matter of weighing the cost of protection against the cost of potential loss. SoftLocker and similar protection schemes do avert most theives (but not all).

        I would definitely rather pay $12 to $20 a month to protect $37+ products.

        As an example...

        $144 - $240 a year for protection compared to $740+ for each 20 units stolen. Believe me, far more than 20 units can get siphoned off in 20 minutes or less once your products find their way to the "free-for-all" black hat hacker sites.

        If you produce popular, sought-after products, I think this type protection scheme is a viable and prudent option. In any case, these solutions do more to lessen the impact of loss, but they don't provide a guarantee against all loss.
        You can't lose what you never had. None of those Black Hat folks
        were ever going to buy the product anyway. The fact that they get
        it free does not mean you lost anything.

        Tsnyder
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        If you knew what I know you'd be doing what I do...
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        • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
          Originally Posted by Tsnyder View Post

          You can't lose what you never had. None of those Black Hat folks were ever going to buy the product anyway. The fact that they get it free does not mean you lost anything.
          There are two additional points to this, as well.

          On the agreement side, many of the BlueFarters that steal your product don't actually want or use or even read it. What they want is the credit for sharing it elsewhere.

          On the disagreement side, it's not that none of them were going to buy the product, it's that you can't assume all of them were going to buy it. Somewhere between 0% and 100% of the people who get your product on a pirate site would have bought it, and there's no way to know where the reality is... but the anti-piracy crowd likes to pretend it's 100% and the anti-protection crowd likes to pretend it's 0%
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          • Profile picture of the author Tsnyder
            Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

            There are two additional points to this, as well.

            On the agreement side, many of the BlueFarters that steal your product don't actually want or use or even read it. What they want is the credit for sharing it elsewhere.

            On the disagreement side, it's not that none of them were going to buy the product, it's that you can't assume all of them were going to buy it. Somewhere between 0% and 100% of the people who get your product on a pirate site would have bought it, and there's no way to know where the reality is... but the anti-piracy crowd likes to pretend it's 100% and the anti-protection crowd likes to pretend it's 0%
            Agreed on the revision. I just can't imagine the % would
            be too high. I just don't believe people who are willing to steal,
            and openly flaunt it, are likely to buy the item.

            Tsnyder
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            If you knew what I know you'd be doing what I do...
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          • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
            Originally Posted by ProductCreator View Post

            you can ask for your product to be added to the "not to be shared" list.
            Keep in mind that this list only applies to that one forum, and all the members are on other similar forums anyway. Put your product on the list at this one, and they just say "okay, I'll put it over on this other one."

            There's really not much of a way to fight piracy once it happens, and there's really not much of a way to prevent it either. The single greatest weapon we have against piracy is to continually adapt and improve our methods - while every pirate site out there may have Jeff Walker's PLF2, none of them have PLF3, so when it launches you won't have any choice except to buy it.

            I find this sort of poetic, myself. The legal status of copyrighted material has been pushed so far beyond reason, the population in general has rebelled and effectively said "we'll put your product in the public domain when we damn well feel like it" - and they're doing it a lot faster. You get, at most, a couple of months to sell a high-profile product before it's just everywhere. And I can't help thinking hey, maybe if we didn't insist on copyright lasting MORE THAN A CENTURY on average, the public would have been okay with letting the system run its course.
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            "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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            • Profile picture of the author Orator
              I'm pretty familiar with the entire scene, part of an old life I'm moving past.

              I can say with absolute certainty that protection schemes are useless at best. The sad fact is there are teams of highly intelligent, and motivated people who can bypass a protection scheme in little under a week.

              For them this is about pride, reputation, and social status. Now are there complex ways to make it harder? Yes, but the problem involved with those is that it usually makes it a lot harder then the average customer wants.

              The reality is that if your product is good enough to warrant being shared, then you should consider it an honor and move on. You should be worried when your product isn't good enough to be stolen, that implies there's no value in it.

              The fact is fighting a copyright war online right now requires a healthy warchest, and a willingness to wait a long time for even the most basic smidgen of action. Big name gurus might have the resources to wage that kind of war, but some of us lowly marketers have to focus on making enough money to get by.
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        • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Tsnyder View Post

          You can't lose what you never had. None of those Black Hat folks
          were ever going to buy the product anyway. The fact that they get
          it free does not mean you lost anything.

          Tsnyder
          Well, that's just not true. The newest trend for these thieves is to create membership sites and sell the products cheaper than you do. They are all over the place. Just the cost of a membership and you can download everyone's products. I've attempted DMCAs on a couple of them and they just move to a new host.
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          • Profile picture of the author Anonymous Affiliate
            Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

            Well, that's just not true. The newest trend for these thieves is to create membership sites and sell the products cheaper than you do. They are all over the place. Just the cost of a membership and you can download everyone's products. I've attempted DMCAs on a couple of them and they just move to a new host.
            Yeah, I've experienced the same thing. I've had a few of my info products stolen and resold over shady forums, pirate resellers and ebay for a fraction of the price. No one would do a thing about it, even if you file DMCAs all over the place. There's no protection to the legal owner.

            Moreover, the problem is that those pirate sites or even free download links (Rapidshare, torrents, etc) get indexed on Google and if anyone does some research on your product as a potential customer and finds those links... well, you've just lost what could have become a legit customer.

            Yes, trust me, it's a BIG problem but there's no way to stop it.
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            • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
              Originally Posted by Anonymous Affiliate View Post

              ....Moreover, the problem is that those pirate sites or even free download links (Rapidshare, torrents, etc) get indexed on Google and if anyone does some research on your product as a potential customer and finds those links... well, you've just lost what could have become a legit customer.
              .
              Maybe it's time the Big G actually de-indexed some of the known offenders.
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        • Profile picture of the author eQuus
          Originally Posted by Tsnyder View Post

          You can't lose what you never had. None of those Black Hat folks were ever going to buy the product anyway. The fact that they get it free does not mean you lost anything.
          Tsnyder
          That's exactly the way I see it. If you visit any BlueFart site you'll find hords of noobs (most of them can't even understand English) downloading software, WSOs and "how I made one BILLION dollars in 3 days," products. Rest assured that 99.9% won't go past the first few pages of your product, before they're up and running after the "how I made a TRILLION dollars while I was cleansing my colon" WSO. It's a well known fact in this business that even those who buy products don't take action on them and this was voice by no other than Kern and Reese as they talked to Tony Robbins (video is still online).

          Plagiarism, however, is something else. A person can buy your product, clone it, and sell it as his. I believe the best way to protect against that is to have a printed product with an ISBN.
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  • Profile picture of the author JayPeete
    I used protection software on my products in the beginning and it was a customer service nightmare.

    It might help on highly volatile niches but in the more obscure ones like underwater basket weaving, the people that purchase really aren't looking to defraud you.

    Just my opinion, you know that everybody has one...
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  • Profile picture of the author HorseStall
    Most developers who use a 3rd party software for protection, also use other protection means. The most effective protection is typically a hybrid of protection methods.

    While you should protect your software, it should not be an obsession, focus on selling you'll have a much better ROI.
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  • Profile picture of the author Christophe Young
    I've never really understood the consensus around here.

    If you use the right software to protect your product that's user-friendly to your customers, then you won't have any problems and don't have to worry about it being stolen.

    And of course, there are always people who can crack anything, but that's not who I'm worried about. I just want to make it difficult, if not impossible for the average user to copy my product and upload it somewhere else.

    So far, it hasn't happened.
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  • Profile picture of the author tamilseo
    The best way to deal is upsell a great service or product in your product with in your product.
    One of my wso (which i stopped selling long back) shared in bluefart sites and i got many queries related to my service i mentioned in my ebook from them.
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