Download page "protection" and monitoring
Since I started selling digital products online, I thought of a way to sort of monitor the activity on my download page and know whenever something goes wrong.
I made a simple PHP script that simply sends me an instant e-mail when someone enters the download page, giving me all sorts of details about the visitor.
So when I make a sale and everything goes as it should, I get 3 e-mails: one from the payment processor ("New Sale"), one from Paypal ("Notification of payment received") and one from my PHP script, that confirms that the buyer has entered the download page. This way, I know that everything went exactly as planned. The e-mail gives me the IP address of the visitor, the refering URL and other useful info (such as OS, browser type and version - so I can better assist them if they have trouble downloading/playing the stuff).
Since the message is sent by the server and received at my address on the same server, the delivery is instant. Sometimes, I receive it sooner than the payment confirmation itself!
Here's the link to the script, which is very simple and straightforward:
> Download Page Script
You don't have to be a programmer to use it. Just modify [Product Name] and e-mail address and you're good to go. Rename your download page as a .PHP file and paste the script at the very beginning of the file in the download page.
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Here are at least 2 examples of cases in which the script would be useful:
1) It has happened to me several times: the buyer made the payment and then just closed the browser window! (I know it's retarded, but it happened). Then, I got a "non delivery of item" ticket from Paypal! Using this script, you can avoid all this hassle. You'll know when the user hasn't downloaded the stuff, and you can simply send them an e-mail, saying "Here's your download link again. Our logs seem to indicate that you haven't downloaded your copy yet...".
2) When my product was stolen (i.e. someone posted the DL link on a forum), I got a little "avalanche" of e-mails notifying me that the DL page was accessed (along with the refering URL
). So I just changed the file name in less than 5 minutes, updated it in the payment processor's control panel and left the thieves without anything to steal. The forum topic then died 
.
Let me know if you can think of any improvements to it or any other uses. I'm sure there are a ton of commercially available, sophisticated products for doing stuff to your download page. But they usually take a lot of time to install and tend to make things really, really complicated. If you don't make hundreds of sales per day, this script should be just fine.
I thought I'd share this with you, maybe you'll find it as useful as I did.
I made a simple PHP script that simply sends me an instant e-mail when someone enters the download page, giving me all sorts of details about the visitor.
So when I make a sale and everything goes as it should, I get 3 e-mails: one from the payment processor ("New Sale"), one from Paypal ("Notification of payment received") and one from my PHP script, that confirms that the buyer has entered the download page. This way, I know that everything went exactly as planned. The e-mail gives me the IP address of the visitor, the refering URL and other useful info (such as OS, browser type and version - so I can better assist them if they have trouble downloading/playing the stuff).
Since the message is sent by the server and received at my address on the same server, the delivery is instant. Sometimes, I receive it sooner than the payment confirmation itself!
Here's the link to the script, which is very simple and straightforward:
> Download Page Script
You don't have to be a programmer to use it. Just modify [Product Name] and e-mail address and you're good to go. Rename your download page as a .PHP file and paste the script at the very beginning of the file in the download page.
-------------------------
Here are at least 2 examples of cases in which the script would be useful:
1) It has happened to me several times: the buyer made the payment and then just closed the browser window! (I know it's retarded, but it happened). Then, I got a "non delivery of item" ticket from Paypal! Using this script, you can avoid all this hassle. You'll know when the user hasn't downloaded the stuff, and you can simply send them an e-mail, saying "Here's your download link again. Our logs seem to indicate that you haven't downloaded your copy yet...".
2) When my product was stolen (i.e. someone posted the DL link on a forum), I got a little "avalanche" of e-mails notifying me that the DL page was accessed (along with the refering URL
). So I just changed the file name in less than 5 minutes, updated it in the payment processor's control panel and left the thieves without anything to steal. The forum topic then died 
.Let me know if you can think of any improvements to it or any other uses. I'm sure there are a ton of commercially available, sophisticated products for doing stuff to your download page. But they usually take a lot of time to install and tend to make things really, really complicated. If you don't make hundreds of sales per day, this script should be just fine.
I thought I'd share this with you, maybe you'll find it as useful as I did.
