Archive for the ‘How to – Tutorials’ Category

Unfortunately, one of the most common problems faced by web marketers that seriously cuts into profits is the issue of unauthorized downloads from their download pages and download directories.

Just imagine your irritation when you discover that the $97 product that you have sold 500 times has actually been downloaded 578 times (all from different IP addresses)… that constitutes a loss of $2716… Yipes, that’s one heck of a loss!

And how did it happen?

Well, there are plenty of ways that it can happen.

1. Search engines indexing your download page and people finding it
2. Individuals finding your download directory
3. Legitimate customers bookmarking your download page with online bookmarking services

I am going to handle these one by one.

Search engines indexing your download page

Because search engines often crawl your site, if you add a download page they are going to find it. However, how do you stop them from indexing that page? Aha, that is really simple… all you need is the tiny meta tag below added to the header section of your download page.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

This tag tells search engines to ignore your download page and not include it in their index. If it isn’t in their index then no unscrupulous rip-off artist can notice it and download your merchandise without authorization

People finding your download directory

Some unscrupulous folks will visit an ecommerce web site then add a simple /download or /downloads to the end of the URL and if the owner hasn’t been a little clever then the result can be a page containing hyperlinks directly to the downloadable files

The way to stop this is to add a simple index.htm or index.html file to the directory. Browsers automatically look for these files and load them if they’re present. That way, if somebody goes to the directory, whatever content you have put on that page will appear rather than the directory contents… mine has a blank page. It’s in all probability also a smart idea to name the directory something utterly obscure, you could give the directory some totally screwy name like ad9cy45jm or whatever that no-one would ever guess would be a download directory. A combination of those two is most likely a good idea just in case somebody has a method of working around the index page.

Note that the index.html page works even with a directory inside a blog… for instance, visit http://automatedblogpostingsoftware.com/downloads and a page with some stupid text meant as a joke will be generated… that is the index.html page on one of Julia’s blogs (Note: This is NOT her download directory, it is a complete decoy LOL)

Legitimate customers bookmarking your download page with on-line bookmarking services

This is the third means by which unauthorised people will access your product downloads. Unfortunately, this is also the toughest one to combat. Folks are allowed to bookmark their download page and it is a perfectly legitimate thing to try simply in case something goes wrong with the first download.

To beat this downside you need software that issues a temporary download link that is only active for a certain amount of time or a certain number of downloads. One such software program is Smartdd (short for ‘smart digital download’). Click here for additional info on SmartDD now!

I hope this post has helped you understand how unauthorized downloads occur and the way to guard your products from the strategies used by unscrupulous people to rip off your hard earned profits!

A serious concern of many web site owners is the fact that when guests click a link they’re taken away from their site which stops more browsing.

So how do you stop visitors leaving your website once they click a link? How do you create a link that will open in a new window or tab?

Fortunately, this is a relatively easy issue to resolve. If you have access to editing the html of your site then it’s just a matter of adding a target=”blank” to the html code for the link as in the instance below.

Example 1: Making a link attached to a graphic or banner open in a new tab or window

<a href=”http://www.mysite.com” target=”blank”> <img src=”http://www.mysite.com/images/banner.jpg”> </a>

This will create one thing like this

Example 2: Forcing text links to open in a new tab or window

<a href=”http://www.mysite.com” target=”blank”> my link here </a>

Will form a link like this:

Resources for Marketers

Whether these links open a new window or browser tab depends on the visitors browser settings. But whichever it does, your site will still be open in their browser for them to come back to.

It should be noted that Google does not allow the code in adsense units to be altered. Therefore it is unavoidable that people leave your site if they click a Google link. If you alter this code Google will disallow ALL clicks and probably shut your adsense account and ban you from ever signing up again.

Any other link could be opened in separate windows or tabs by following the instructions above.

For beginner web marketers, the notion of creating a paypal buy now button can be extraordinarily intimidating. I confess that it took me a VERY long time to make the attempt myself. I’ve got to laugh now because my initial attempt at ecommerce involved putting in the ‘Opencart’ software through Simple Scripts in Cpanel. The installation and setup for that cart was vastly more advanced than putting in a paypal button… Oh well, live and learn!

If your site is an online shopping mall then you’d be best to use shoppingcart software. However, if you only sell a small range of products or individual things like downloadable info products then a paypal buy now button is perfect. Paypal buy now buttons are especially good for digital download products because once you set them up you will earn on autopilot. Simply imagine waking up in the morning to find you’ve sold ten $17 products throughout the night… and they are already delivered! NICE!!! The best thing is that people TRUST paypal, thus using paypal buttons truly will increase sales (particularly if the payment section of your page contains a paypal emblem and states that payments are via paypal and are therefore a hundred% secure).

Before you start, you will need a success or thank-you page for paypal to direct customers to after checkout completion. If you’re selling information products this page could contain the download link. Alternatively, you may harvest the buyers email address and send the download link to them via email. In that case your success page would contain an optin form. A smart way to keep people on that list is to offer some kind of instructional or bonus product that comes in instalments.

So how do you create a paypal buy now button?

You may notice that Paypal has the method set up in 3 steps; Button type and payment details, inventory tracking and customizing checkout pages. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions below to make a paypal buy now button. Once you’ve created your initial buy now button you can create additional buttons using the ‘create similar button’ function.

1. Log in to paypal and click ‘Merchant Services’ and ‘buy now buttons’ as per the image below
2. Step one: Creating Button type and payment details
• Specify the sort of product you’re selling. Choices include; Products, Services, Subscriptions/recurring billing, donations and gift vouchers. Once you’ve created your first paypal button you can click the ‘go to my saved buttons’ beneath this selection to edit an existing button or produce similar buttons. To create a similar button click the ‘action’ link beside the chosen button and choose ‘create similar button’.
• Select whether you wish an ‘add to cart’ button or a ‘buy now’ button. Add to cart buttons are for sites that supply multiple products whereas buy now buttons are for those that sell individual items.
• Specify the name of the product you are selling – Use something logical as this becomes the name the button is saved under for future reference. That way you’ll recognize it later. Beneath this option you can also add an item ID if you’re selling physical merchandise and wish to use Paypal’s inventory management system to trace your inventory
• Enter the item cost in the next field and which currency you would like to receive payment in (eg. US dollars)
• Next you customize the appearance of your paypal buy now button and the options associated with it. You’ll add drop down menus for size, color or any other option. You can customise the looks of the button. You can even specify your own button graphic.
• The next option is Postage. If you are selling a physical product that you can charge a flat postage rate on (i.e. small, lightweight things like CDs) then you’ll be able to fill this field in to specify the postage rate. To activate this option you will need to go to myaccount>profile>selling preferences>postage calculations and check the ‘override postage methods per transaction’ box.
• The last option under this section is the sort of Merchant identification you would like to use. You can use plain text where your email address is visible in the button code or you’ll choose to use ‘secure merchant account ID’ which replaces the plain text email with a merchant number that only paypal can connect with your email address. Using this selection stops spammers being able to harvest your email address, therefore it is an excellent option to choose.
3. Step Two: Inventory Tracking
• There are only a couple of choices underneath this section. The primary option is to save your buttons at paypal. This protects buttons from fraudulent changes (eg. switching your paypal account for someone elses), Saves buttons in your paypal profile. Allows you to easily produce similar buttons and lets you edit buttons with paypal tools
• Inventory tracking for physical merchandise – Allows you to specify item quantities and stop further sales of sold out items
4. Step three: Customizing checkout pages
• If you are selling physical products you’ll be able to choose whether to allow customers to update the order amount under this section.
• You can also add a field permitting customers to leave special instructions.
• Request customer address if needed for postage functions
• Specify a URL to forward to in the event of order cancellation.
• Specify a URL to forward to after successful payment – As mentioned earlier, if you’re selling downloadable products this page can contain your download link OR an optin form to harvest customer emails and send them the download link via email. The advantage of this being that you can add them to your sales funnel… just make sure you specify that they may be contacted later and make it ‘double opt in’.
• Ebay power users can also add other variables
5. Finally – simply click the ‘create button’ button and your paypal buy now button will be saved to your profile and you’ll be taken to a page containing the code to add to your webpage. You have 2 choices, either use the button or a link.

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