People sharing your products for free - Why Worry?

Exactly. Those are people who were never even going to pay in the first place, are not your target market, and have little to no impact on your intended audience. Don't fret over them.

I've seen hundreds of people say this, online.

I think it's completely wrong.

The sad reality is that the world is full of people who, when they want to read a particular e-book or whatever, will do a serious search for a copy they can download illicitly without paying (from a torrent, black-hat, or file-sharing site), and then buy it only if they can't find one.

I myself know many people who do that. And so do you, Anton. And so does Tim Ferriss, who should know better than to propagate nonsense like this.

He just likes to be seen to be coming from "a place of relaxed abundance", I suspect - and he certainly doesn't always quite think through what he says.

This "perspective" (it's such nonsense that I wouldn't even go so far as to call it a "theory" - a "theory", however deeply mistaken, has to be based on something genuinely observed, and this doesn't qualify) is all part and parcel of the attitude which some people (quite unaccountably) have toward product security: they say they believe that worrying about product security is "negative thinking" and that because there's no such thing as 100% security without compromising on customer convenience (which I'm sure is perfectly true), the 98% or 99% product security you can fairly easily have, without inconveniencing anyone at all, is somehow "not worth bothering with" (which is far from true!).

It makes me wonder whether the fact that no door-lock will keep out a dedicated, professional burglar means that they don't bother closing their front doors when they go out, either.

Frankly, I think the whole thing's just silly. :p

No rudeness intended at all, but it totally baffles me that intelligent, educated people can seriously believe this. To me, it's not very significantly different from the conversations in the Off Topic Fourm about fluffy rabbits living on Mars with no air and no water. Really, it makes me realise how very, very out-of-step I so often am with some of the perspectives quite widely expressed here.

You're a highly intelligent, highly educated, highly literate, perceptive, professional guy: how can you seriously believe that to be true? Many of them would have paid if they couldn't steal it. They have a different morality from yours and mine. They feel differently about the internet, and they don't respect other people's intellectual property rights online. When they want to acquire a digital product, before paying they try to find it free instead. Huge numbers of them! Come on - someone who has been through law school is not this naive: you must be aware that people (including people who will pay when they can't steal) do this, surely?

With WSOs specifically, some people would check those places to see if there is a free copy shared before buying. That is, they would buy, but if there is a free copy then why bother? Specially if it is just an ebook or video course.

Proof? I've seen courses sold and people getting results on creating small sites with a fake download link (which in fact is your affiliate link) to rank page 1 on google. Because people were getting results means that many potential buyers try to find a free copy and if they can't they end up buying the product.

Thus, you are losing sales.

However, if you are a major product seller and you use those places for branding (specially outside this forum) then it can turn out profitable.

I think it is really tough to stop. Also the follow up on those ppl would not be profitable and I think that is what Tim meant by this is not my core audience bec to him that would not be a profitable lead. Thanks for sharing good read.

Well, publishing it on Amazon rather than distributing it via pdf are two entirely different things. The Blackhat sites get it and distribute it to people who would have been your target market. Many of them sell it themselves in memberships sites and outrank you for your own product name in the serps. If it weren't available on Blackhat sites, you would undoubtedly make more sales. Some of these ebooks/products are distributed via BH sites by the thousands. You can't tell me that some of those that are interested in that product would not have bought it from you if that's the only way they could have acquired it.

I use DMCAs to the file sharing sites that they place them on with great success. I don't subscribe to the "they weren't my target markets" or the "you should feel flattered that they liked it enough to share it" theories.

Interesting point of view. Thanks for sharing it.

He did not upload a copy of his book, he only uploaded a sample chapter.

So everyone downloading his torrent package was getting a promotional package for his book designed to increase sales.

He did not share the book he was selling.

Also, you say "despite the boycott", but you didn't mention a boycott so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Who boycotted, online retailers? Who sold 250,000 copies if it was not online retailers?

The music industry and movie industry used to use this marketing tactic too. They would release a partial clip with advertising on Torrent sites and people would download "new hit song - hot artist" thinking they were cleverly stealing the song, but they just end up with an advertisment for the song.

As sbucciarel said, in the IM industry, the problem isn't just torrents and file share sites. Your work gets copied, shared and promoted directly to your target audience through 'black hat' marketing forums.

These forums get a lot of Google love so searching for "Product Name" brings up all the unauthorized forum sharing threads over legitimate sites.

Alexis' post is bang-on too. All this "people who download would never by anything, ever, anyway" is a pretty big assumption with no evidence to back it up.

It also doesn't explain why companies spend money to advertise on torrent sites if they have no hope of ever reaching a paying customer.

Well. that's part of this business, a good recommendation is to put a lot of affiliates and USEFUL links so they get those products and you earn anyway.

There is something that you should worry about, and something you should be happy about.

I would start with something that you should worry about. If people shares your product for free without your consent, they may have brainwashed the people that your product was free, now, they just give it to them.

And now something that you should be happy about is that you market your product for free. You won't experience hassle in marketing your product. People will know your product and not only one, but many of them.

If those people who received it were never going to purchase in the first place, where is the loss? I suppose it's because we can't say definitely that they were never going to purchase.

im not sure if i agree with Tim. Sometimes people want a risk free offer. and i think that the people who are looking for torrent may in fact turn into paying customers. i think he should instead put a squeeze page link and make it a .zip file and have give up at least their email address to get the product. he'd least be able to funnel with additional free videos and convert them in the long run.

Hello everyone,

I know I have heard of people putting affiliate links in their ebooks, books, etc. as a "compromise" of sorts for when, if the blackhat sites and such do get illegal copies of their ebooks/books, etc. and pass them around, the original product owner hopes that the "extra publicity" of sorts will lead to additional profit.

Of course, that doesn't mean that those who "stole" the book will necessarily use and purchase from those affiliate links.

With that all said, the challenge of protecting your books to the point where stealing from you is virtually impossible to do. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but, there will be times when theft does occur - you just attempt to learn from it and close off the loopholes as much as possible so that you get the hard-earned and deserved money to go where it should go - in your pocket/accounts. :-)

Just my 2 cents.

Take care,

Joe Chengery