WSO's - A cautionary tale (for buyers and sellers)

That's a great point, Shamir. Just recently I went to some older WSO download pages and they had disappeared.

Occasionally, it might also be a matter of an old domain not having been renewed.

Shamir,

As far as I can recall, I've always downloaded the PDF or software immediately after purchasing a WSO, so I've seldom needed to revisit the download page.

You don't say how long after the purchases you left it before returning, but to be fair, unless it's specified in the original offer, or if ongoing online access or support is intrinsic to the product or service, I think it's unreasonable to expect an offer to be kept open indefinitely - particularly if that product was indeed a "special offer".

And where possible, as you point out, be sure to download your product as and when you purchase it.


Frank

This is hardly new. Sadly. Also, some older 'successful' Flippa deals suffer from the same patterns

I tell my buyers to download products in 6 months, but I still get angry emails after 5 years saying where is my download link, they never open after downloading. I think people who buy have to download you can't complain after 5 years or call the next generation and say why the site is not up at some point it's over, download the stuff.

Just my 2 cents. I sent it to the staglers but why do people wait years to open the thing they bought i have no clue then look for someone to blame.

Shamir,

It's been a while since I've looked at some of these great WSO's, but when I did a handful of them have been taken down. Meaning, the 'login' pages are not there. Even if I go to my original WSO receipt, the links doesn't exist anymore.

What types of products are you specifically talking about? When you state "login" pages, are you referring to membership-type of websites where you have to log in?

When the product is purchased is the membership site access itself the product or is it a membership site where people have to log on and then download their products? Please clarify.

RoD

Very interesting thought Shamir Rele

I have had this trouble as well with other products (not just WSO's).

My take is that if you sell a product online you should maintain the access link. If you take the product website or download page down, or move it to another site, then it's the seller's responsibility to keep his / her buyers up to date with where they can access their product.

Even although you have downloaded the product to your computer there are still circumstances where you might want to re-visit the product etc. One of these cases might just be to buy an upsell - think about that.

Some of the biggest offenders are some of the biggest names in IM. There is one massive name (for obvious reasons I can't actually name him) and he continually closes his "old" products re-badges them and open them up in another site and re-sells them.

I have had to email and produce receipts and customer numbers from way back, time and time again, to re-gain access to products i have bought previously. This is soooooo irritating, and it's happened at least 6 times to me now!

One of the most annoying habits is the "lifetime access" that turns out to be around 3 months, and the "lifetime updates" that never happen.

Good thread... good point.

So here's the million dollar question - how long do you expect a seller to keep the materials up? Forever?

Obviously there has to be a 'reasonable' time limit someplace in this logic because if not then it's just complaining to have something to complain about...

Obvious 6 months isn't reasonable, but how many years are you talking about here?

Stuff happens. I let go of one of the domains where I kept certain downloads. With one WSO in particular something that was relevant at one point actually became a liability so I took down the download. There are other perfectly legitimate reasons for moving on.

I think you download your stuff and then back it up in several places. Then you've got it. Any seller has the right to remove old material, especially if it becomes dated or otherwise irrelevant.

Arrggg... I can understand a membership site, even if it's basically dead, to be kept up. Perhaps for years.

Downloadable products that are supposed to be downloaded after purchase should be kept up for a reasonable amount of time after the last sale. The question becomes, what is reasonable?

If a person orders a product, never downloads it, or has a disaster like a hard drive crash and wants it again, I can see that they should be able to get it. If it's years and years however I don't think it's reasonable to expect the seller to keep it there. They should be able to open a support ticket and get it sent to them.

This reminds me that I need to work on a policy that tells buyers that the download will expire at x number of months, years, etc. I would still give a legit buyer the product via help desk ticket, but it could avoid future hassle.

That's the first thing that came to my mind.

The average expiring link is good for seven days. I regularly buy from a site that limits downloads to three in a year.

Odds are good that someone is paying every time you download. S3 is not free.

I instantly download everything to a 50 gig external HD. They are really inexpensive. (;

This is why I will never pay for access to "streaming only" video products or any other non downloadable training modules that you can only view by logging in. Especial those memberships asking for a large upfront fee in exchange for so called "lifetime access" to a membership where videos will be made available to view, but not allowed to download. I know some marketers choose to offer this type of thing because they are afraid that their material will be shared etc etc. But hey, that means you're missing out on my cash.

I've found that 95% of the time if a WSO is listed with JVzoo based on my experience that if I never downloaded the product initially it will remain there to be accessed for eben up until months afterwards.

I've had people years later want to redownload because they had hard drive crashes and I help them if they can provide proof or if I can quickly look it up but it's not really my responsibility to provide them backups.

A lot of major companies charge for extended download periods now. After "X" time you can't download it w/out buying it again. Pretty smart if you ask me.

Of course if the content is online, that's a little different. Members/buyers should have plenty of notice and a method to download it before it's closed.

-G

You're either absolutely insane or...

.. and what I believe to be more true, using this thread to prove yourself as one of the best forum trolls in the history of WF.

You seriously want someone's estate to secure and host a resource for your personal access after they are dead? You really know how crazy and pathetic that makes you sound, right?

No, as a matter of fact it's not. LOL. Why would it be around any longer than when what purpose it served is over...

By your deluded logic, there should never be an expired domain.

I hate it when I can't download th videos to a product I bought, for this very reason, and I will probably not be able to find the damn URL months later if I need to refer back.

Great idea...sometimes less easy than you might think. Especially when there are partners involved who own part of the sites. But in general, you're right on this.

You've been here longer, with no thanked posts... Not even this one.

Is it taking you 10 years to get the point, which would be that you have nothing of value to contribute.

Go cry in a corner because someone moved on and you can't.

This is a great point.

To anyone with low hard drive space, you can often get a good amount of free storage space from cloud storage services. Dropbox will give you 2G just for using the service.

This has happened to me a lot as well. I don't have issue with the owner taking the product down, but give your buyers adequate notice to download the product before you just take it down

​Mike, some sellers do not care. I'm not saying you are one of them.

I'm not yelling (well, besides that one post).

And buyers have noticed yes. Just stating the obvious man. I'm a buyer. I'm also a seller. I'm also just responding to people here in this thread. I'm not saying anymore than I need to.

On that note Mike, you don't need to contribute anymore if this is pissing you off. You can step out. Anybody can.

You're also not calling anybody else out, which shows me a bias on you're part. Again, calling it like I see it. You can say the same thing to them... ask them to chill.

I'm able to make a call because I am on both sides Mike. Anyways, thanks for the award. The winner of the most sarcastic has to be you.

Spot on, Shamir. I've had similar experiences and it's very disappointing.

I don't really agree that sellers have the responsibility to keep the product up indefinitely. Not every product out there has that long of a shelf life. Certain products goes out of date and becomes useless months, weeks or even days later.

If your product no longer holds accurate information after 2-3 years, is there really a point to keep it up there? You could argue that the seller can just include a note of some sort on the download page notifying buyers about it, but as Mike said, it costs the seller money to keep it running.

But at the end of the day, it really does depends on the type of product you're selling. As a buyer I would try to always download everything, or at least the most important parts of what I bought simply because it may no longer be there in the future. Even if the seller kept paying for the storage, the files could still end up corrupted and the sellers themselves may no longer have the original files or could no longer be contacted for various possible reasons.

There are just too many factors involved here that to expect something to still be around online after 5 years (especially when we're talking about downloadables like ebooks) is really you taking risks.

I think it's the buyers' responsibility to download and store the product they have bought. Digital or not, product is a product. You buy it and you take it away with you. Then, it's your responsibility. Of course, if the product gets taken down the next day, than this will be wrong, but few years to forever, this is just too much that the buyer can want, unless it is mentioned that they get free lifetime storage of the file. I think there should be a TOS somewhere on the download page that clarifies this kind of things.

Yep, that's absolutely an insurmountable problem with no known resolution.

This all seems much more reasonable now that you put it in that light. I suppose it really is the WSO seller's responsibility to keep portals and resources up forever.

It's not often that I have my mind changed but you've done it and I'm certainly impressed. I say we go to every WSO and post about this to warn future potential buyers and serve notice to anyone with the nerve to list a WSO who may have previously thought 2-5 years was 'enough.'

Those scumbags....

Although I don't sell wsos, I sell lots of downloadable video content -- I always clearly tell people to download within 30 days, and that links will be removed after that time. I use password IP tracking security to limit logins, to prevent password sharing. Like buying a downloadable video or image from a microstock site like istock, you can download it once or twice, and then you're done.

Hint: I also tell my customers to be sure to backup their videos to a 2nd hard drive (so that if their initial hard drive crashes, they have a backup). With dozens of downloadable courses, and thousands of customers, I'm not going to be in the business of maintaining administrative continued download access per user for years, for so much content. Nobody's complained, as it's a sensible approach.

Buy it. download it. make a safe backup. we're done.

think of the administrative pain in the rear it would be if some person said "help I bought a course from you 4 years ago and my hard drive crashed and can you reupload it to your server and give me a new login and password", Multiplied by several thousand customers? no thanks.

by telling people you won't reupload courses/videos later (I do), and tell them to make backups (I do), you help control for the lazy people who don't want to work and do their fair share. It's like selling books, and if the customer loses the book, or their dog eats it, amazon/barnes and noble won't just give them a free replacement book, years later. or lost/scratched dvd/cd/whatever.

as my business continues to grow, putting reasonable rules/guidelines/fences in place helps customers be more responsible. if it ever gets to be a problem (it hasn't so far, with few exceptions), I may offer some "reupload/re-enable download access" service at some high price to cover my wasted time, though that's highly unlikely. eg "lost a webinar video download from 2009, sparky? ok there's a $200 admin fee to reupload/re-enable download links per video".

Thankfully most of my customers aren't morons so I don't need to worry about it. I'm just fair and firm in setting rules of conduct/TOS when buying from me that are specific, and followed. When your info business grows (I'm up 12%+ growth year over year), you have to not let customers be irresponsible children; instead have fair/firm guidelines. By having firm guidelines, you also scare away moron customers, which is especially helpful. I don't want business from password-sharers, lazy people, those who don't follow directions etc

I don't know, perhaps its me. When I buy a WAO, I'm quick to download it and get right into the product.Am I missing something?

And how long do you think that sellers should keep the access up?
3 months, for sure, 6 months yes, after a year though your just procrastinating. And you know what they say about procrastination dont you?

If you have not downloaded your puchase after a year or more and the seller has not sold that product for a year or more do you really expect him to keep the access portal up still. Should he renew the domain and keep paying hosting because after a year a buyer still has not taken 5 minutes to make a download? Come on get real.

You know if I order something online and have it sent to a local retail store they generally store it for me for 14 days before they ship it back to the warehouse. If a seller gives you a year to download your purchase and you still have not then its your fault not theres. Just because you bought there product does not mean they are your digital storehouse. Thats what your hard drive is for. Download your purchase already.

This actually leads to another point. If your buying stuff and not using it for months and months on end then your probably spending to much time buying stuff you dont really need.

There is always the possibility - if you want to keep the videos - to record them via a screen recording program like snagit.

Timo

Well to be fair for training / videos I can understand. But I was speaking in the context of the products I sell, which is software. (and yes I have had buyers contact me over a year ofter their purchase wondering why there download link is broken,.. good thing for them I archive everything I write) With software my though process which I feel is reasonable is that a year to press the download button is plenty.

That is a great piece of advice. I used to be quite this freeware software geek and used to love to try out various programs. I always downloaded them and kept them. people sometimes ask me why. It's funny that I'm still using freeware that has since been removed from the Internet or has been changed into a lockdown paid version.

You know swipe the input method for android phones? That used to be freeware piece of software from the IBM research lab for Tablet PC computers (I mean the original ones with the stylus running Windows Tablet PC) back in 2004. I still have it. Great piece of software and not available for the Tablet PC anymore. Tons of examples like that.

Download everything hard drive space is cheap!

I think OP has turned blue in the face with his explanation here and needs no more clarifying. People here are too quick to jump on him. He has a very valid point. Everyone keeps saying, download as soon as you pay for it. okay, let me look for the downl........oh, there isn't one. It's a view portal only without the option of downloading. His point was, since it's a view port only, give your customers the chance to download it before you take it down or leave it up. There are many cheap and free ways the seller can do this. The comparison to brick and mortar is completely off the mark and irrelevant.