hosting eBook on WP membership site?

by humbledmarket Banned
10 replies
Hey Warriors,

I'd like to get your opinion here on what's the best way to distribute an internet marketing eBook.

We've found that within 24 hours .pdf eBooks are quickly available on many blackhat sites.

Would using a WP Membership site and hosting the content on pages as I've seen some products do help prevent this? And do you think it's worth it?

Please also suggest any plugin you think will do this best or if you have any other alternative option.

It would be cool if there was a service that will generate a unique key for each .pdf file download and notifying server with the IP address of every access.
#ebook #hosting #membership #pros or cons #site
  • Profile picture of the author Duvallmarketers
    You should check out Wishlist Member plugin for Wordpress. It's a membership site management plugin that I use and love. It can limit access in a number of ways... but not issue a specific key.

    I'm an affiliate so if you're interested in actually buying the plugin, let me know. I can send you my affiliate link. Every little commission helps.

    Cheers,
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    Brian Duvall, CEO
    DuvallMedia.com
    We build market leaders!

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    • Profile picture of the author erange
      I don't have any plugin's...but I think you have to account for "some" blackhat infiltration. You can't stop all of it... ;-)

      Eileen
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      • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
        Banned
        Originally Posted by erange View Post

        I don't have any plugin's...but I think you have to account for "some" blackhat infiltration. You can't stop all of it... ;-)

        Eileen
        Yup kind of expecting it but just looking for potential ways to discourage some. Was thinking if we used a membership site which would make things a bit more difficult to copy it might help
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  • Profile picture of the author konakid
    Membership sites can hide the download links to people that aren't logged in, block accounts that have too many IPs accessing them (so people don't share accounts), and limit the total number of downloads per account.

    You could even embed the pdf so they couldn't download it and had to read it online.

    However, all a blackhat person would have to do is take screen shots of each page and recreate the pdf before uploading it again.

    In reality, no matter what protections you put in place, people will be able to rip off your product and steal it. Most of the time your protections just end up pissing off your actual paying customers.

    Unfortunately, if it's online in any form it will be possible to steal. I think the best way to combat piracy is just to have a really good product that makes people want to buy it. You'll always lose sales to pirates, but if the product is good it hopefully won't make a big difference.
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    • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
      Banned
      Originally Posted by konakid View Post

      Membership sites can hide the download links to people that aren't logged in, block accounts that have too many IPs accessing them (so people don't share accounts), and limit the total number of downloads per account.

      You could even embed the pdf so they couldn't download it and had to read it online.

      However, all a blackhat person would have to do is take screen shots of each page and recreate the pdf before uploading it again.

      In reality, no matter what protections you put in place, people will be able to rip off your product and steal it. Most of the time your protections just end up pissing off your actual paying customers.

      Unfortunately, if it's online in any form it will be possible to steal. I think the best way to combat piracy is just to have a really good product that makes people want to buy it. You'll always lose sales to pirates, but if the product is good it hopefully won't make a big difference.
      Very good point although I think if we can make it slightly harder, it would discourage some then simply being able to download off eJunkie and reupload

      Will look into the membership site option
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  • Profile picture of the author timpears
    You are better off trying to drive traffic and conversions than to spend youor time worrying about the black hat theft. The theft of online digital products is part of the businness, and if you spend your time tryinig to eliminate that, you will lose many times what you would have lost to theft, in lost sales. It comes with the business
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    Tim Pears

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    • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
      Banned
      Originally Posted by timpears View Post

      You are better off trying to drive traffic and conversions than to spend youor time worrying about the black hat theft. The theft of online digital products is part of the businness, and if you spend your time tryinig to eliminate that, you will lose many times what you would have lost to theft, in lost sales. It comes with the business
      Yes very true point. We are expecting some good portion to be downloaded illegally and we're fine with it but would just like to mitigate it (our last guide a year back was distributed on various blackhat sites with 1000s of downloads = the problem is how high they rank on the search engine for the product name)

      Thanks for your advice though
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  • Profile picture of the author sb06
    I recently created an ebook and am selling it on my wordpress site through JVzoo. It's pretty awesome and I haven't had any problems so far Not only do I get a perfect little "pay now" button on the simple sales page I created to sell my product... I can also acquire affiliates who will promote my product.

    I know that doesn't solve the problem of people stealing and uploading the ebook once they've purchased it... but I think that's always a chance you have to take after creating an informational product to sell.
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  • Profile picture of the author vtotheyouknow
    There are a bunch of ways to protect your download. A few are:

    1. You can host it in the members area of your site (but once somebody has the download link they can pass it around)

    2. You can host your file on Amazon S3 and use an expiring URL

    3. You can use a protected content delivery system like eJunkie or DLguard. Ejunkie's pretty good for this kind of thing.

    4. You can use something like S3Mediavault (from the DAP folks) to make files accessible only from the pages you choose. So only members will be able to download it in the members area and even if they give out the link, it won't work outside of the pages you specify.

    5. You can say screw it and just focus on making money. If your content's any good, people will find a way to steal it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Weblover50
    Wishlist memeber is a good plugin, I have used it for a client and we both are happy. However, as you have realized it can only prevent downloading from its own site and if a buyer publish it somewhere, you will have no control over what happens next. May be you can take advantage of places like clickbank and have a strong line of affiliates promoting it and ignore the free downloads going on in warez sites.

    The key is a network like clickbank would give you more visibility, more chance of getting the product popular and more chance of your product page out ranking the free downloads sites.
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