A Small Contribution; How I handle (and leverage) piracy
Piracy is unstoppable when you sell digital wares of any kind, however I've developed a few techniques to make things simpler.
Part 1:Avoiding "Refund" Pirates
We all know who these guys are; they buy a product and file for a refund right after. This is especially prevalent with instant downloads, and license free products.
To help offset this, I do the following.
Step 1:Setup an account with Plimus.com
If your doing high volume, and refund pirates (Not unsatisfied customers mind you; plimus wont help you there) are a serious problem you need a plimus account for one simple reason.
Everytime you have a refund request, or a complaint filed via paypal it goes into there internal system. I've never looked inside it myself, but I do know if you have a predetermined amount of refunds per month (Regardless to wether or not you issue them and resolve the issue) paypal will put a hold on your account until you jump through a dozen different hoops (some with fire!).
Plimus acts as an intermediary; assuming all the risk for you. The only catch is they almost always issue refunds on request. But this eliminates the problem of getting a hold or limited account during a product launch (or just a period of exceptional volume)
Step 2:Setup a kunaki.com account
Repeat after me
I will always ship a hardcopy.
Kunaki makes this simple. They even have free scripts, so that an instant download AND a hardcopy can be shipped on purchase. This provides you with a tracking ID, for those pesky "Not received" customers who love to run with your money. Personally, I enjoy these claims in particular. unlike the refund pirates, these people make there fraud completely obvious to the payment processor. A quick response with a tracking ID, and you dont need to issue a refund; the would be pirate has his product-you have your money- and as a bonus the pirate gets a few blackmarks on his credit card/payment processor of choice.
Kunaki charges around .99c per CD shipped. You can design a jacket, ship in dvd cases, cd cases, and even boxes with manuals (if you like)
This makes your operation look much more professional as well. Your no longer an "Info-merchant" or a "Software merchant" but a Software company. Your selling real, tangible, physical products.
If you opt to only offer hard copys, it also cuts back in piracy by a huge percentage.
Part 2
riving traffic, while protecting your asset
This is my absolute personal favourite.
Anytime I invest in, or launch a product I *always* have a team do this for me. Data entry workers are fine; its a simple task.
First, do a bit of viral marketing. Create *something* that you can offer for free, and upsell your end product with.
Next, do some keyword research. Find every single directly applicable term in your niche.
Its simple really. This last part;
Upload it AS the finished product on as many torrent trackers, warez forums, and other pirate havens as you can think of.
This makes it much more difficult to find your pirate goods in the SERPS.
When a pirate does end up finding your product, you often end up with free traffic. AND if your viral was exceptional, there going to *need* your product.
Thats the jist of it I suppose. I'm sure I could write some more, but its closing on 6am here so I'm going to turn in now.
Source:
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to my blog; I'll have to look through the rules.
Goodnight warriors!
Part 1:Avoiding "Refund" Pirates
We all know who these guys are; they buy a product and file for a refund right after. This is especially prevalent with instant downloads, and license free products.
To help offset this, I do the following.
Step 1:Setup an account with Plimus.com
If your doing high volume, and refund pirates (Not unsatisfied customers mind you; plimus wont help you there) are a serious problem you need a plimus account for one simple reason.
Everytime you have a refund request, or a complaint filed via paypal it goes into there internal system. I've never looked inside it myself, but I do know if you have a predetermined amount of refunds per month (Regardless to wether or not you issue them and resolve the issue) paypal will put a hold on your account until you jump through a dozen different hoops (some with fire!).
Plimus acts as an intermediary; assuming all the risk for you. The only catch is they almost always issue refunds on request. But this eliminates the problem of getting a hold or limited account during a product launch (or just a period of exceptional volume)
Step 2:Setup a kunaki.com account
Repeat after me
I will always ship a hardcopy.
Kunaki makes this simple. They even have free scripts, so that an instant download AND a hardcopy can be shipped on purchase. This provides you with a tracking ID, for those pesky "Not received" customers who love to run with your money. Personally, I enjoy these claims in particular. unlike the refund pirates, these people make there fraud completely obvious to the payment processor. A quick response with a tracking ID, and you dont need to issue a refund; the would be pirate has his product-you have your money- and as a bonus the pirate gets a few blackmarks on his credit card/payment processor of choice.
Kunaki charges around .99c per CD shipped. You can design a jacket, ship in dvd cases, cd cases, and even boxes with manuals (if you like)
This makes your operation look much more professional as well. Your no longer an "Info-merchant" or a "Software merchant" but a Software company. Your selling real, tangible, physical products.
If you opt to only offer hard copys, it also cuts back in piracy by a huge percentage.
Part 2
riving traffic, while protecting your assetThis is my absolute personal favourite.
Anytime I invest in, or launch a product I *always* have a team do this for me. Data entry workers are fine; its a simple task.
First, do a bit of viral marketing. Create *something* that you can offer for free, and upsell your end product with.
Next, do some keyword research. Find every single directly applicable term in your niche.
Its simple really. This last part;
Upload it AS the finished product on as many torrent trackers, warez forums, and other pirate havens as you can think of.
This makes it much more difficult to find your pirate goods in the SERPS.
When a pirate does end up finding your product, you often end up with free traffic. AND if your viral was exceptional, there going to *need* your product.
Thats the jist of it I suppose. I'm sure I could write some more, but its closing on 6am here so I'm going to turn in now.
Source:
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to my blog; I'll have to look through the rules.
Goodnight warriors!
Back in the game!