John,

I 100% agree with you on this.

Yes, it’s important to protect your download/thank you pages but in the grand scheme of things, as you point out, if someone didn’t pay for it and wants to get it, they’re going to.

So what if they do? Again, as you point out, that just means there’s another copy floating around the cloud with YOUR links in it.

Why would someone disagree with this?

Hmmm

Hi John,

A thought-provoking post, thank you. Our first instinct is to protect what we create, but as you’ve rightly pointed out, this is virtually impossible when dealing with digital products. One only has to look at the amount of software, films, music etc out there that can be acquired without going through the official channels to realise what an impossible task this would be.

I like the idea of ensuring that you have various links inside your own products that would then mean that wherever they end up & whoever is distributing them, the royalties still come back to you. Talk about turning a situation around!

You’re also right that it’s just a fruitless waste of time & energy trying to keep up with these people and seeing whether your prodcuts have been copied. Much better to spend your time creating new products or in fact spending time with loved ones than worrying about the inevitable.

Isn’t the saying “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”?

Thanks,

Nikki / PMW

Hi John,

I love your post. I started blogging 2 weeks ago, I created several blogs for different subjects where I need to express opnions or share information.
I am preoccupied by content theft. Afraid I might lose money because of that. But in the end, I keep telling myself that people enjoy my posts and information and keep coming back for more will talk about it to their friends and, if there are a few copy cats among them, from a long term point of view, it doesn’t matter. My online presence and reputation is my primary objective. As Brian Tracy says, “do what you love and the money will follow”. And I realize I love blogging. When I don’t have a day job, I will have even more time to get more deeply in the topics deep to my heart.

Thanks for your post, it helps remind me not to be afraid of content theft in the long run.

Have a wonderful day !

Philippe Moisan

That is such a good article John and it has answered many of my own concerns. I am – maybe I should say ‘was’ after reading your article – paranoid about people accessing my download pages and it was on the tip of my tongue to seek advice from you personally as to how you protect your own work.

Now I get the advice I need without asking and you have saved me a long job of moving books around and changing passwords and such.

And you are right about most people being honest and genuinely preferring to pay for products than access them free of charge. Only today I had someone say he had managed to find one of my download pages and now he wants to pay for the product.

So thanks for that John, I personally think that’s one of the most important tips you’ve ever given and like all your readers I love you for it!!

Best wishes

Avril

Thanks for posting this John.

This is something that bothered me a LOT but then I realised that if you put your product on Clickbank, all anyone needs to do is request a refund. Clickbank makes it and bingo, they’ve still got your product – and no need to muck about cracking your security. Love the idea of adding affiliate links –

and @Randy

I have a refresh to the main URL index page in my download folder – but I think your idea is MUCH better! Thanks for that!

Cheers!

Susan

Hi John:

As internet marketers we should only be focused on that which is most important, the creating new products. Creating new products will generate more business leading to more profit, while tracking down people who copy our work just costs us time and money.

Thanks for all you do.

Anthony

Hi John, makes a whole lot of sense to me. If you are going to take my work, the links within can truly earn me money.

In fact if you steal my work pass it around to everyone you know and let them pass it around as well and so on and so on.

Terry Conti

Great post John.
I totally agree.

Like others here I use an index page in the download folders.
I have also recently started using no follow code

just above the title in the index page. Hopefully at least then my download pages don’t get shown in the search engine results.

I’ve found some of my stuff on other sites. The sites are always poor quality and I doubt they are getting any traffic so they are hardly “competition”. Like you say, John, its not worth wasting your time trying to stop them.

Hi John,

Loved this post, I used to be so terrified of people stealing my work, but now I don’t care.

Like you said, have enough in place so that if they steal it, it simply doesn’t matter.

You will never rid the world of these types of people, just play them at their own game, they think they are getting the better of you, but really the joke is on them.

Sally

Very true John,

Who cares if someone downloads your product for free?

As long as 98% of the people that come to your sales page
acctualy buys then your quids in.

I don’t agree with being ok with people stealing your full
eBook. If at the end of the day how the hell are you going
to stop it from happening?

So the wise thing to do is to fill it with your affilaite links
like you said.

Very good blog post.

Kind Regards

Lee Mckenna

Makes a lot of sense that John.

I’ve bought a few download protection scripts in the past, MyDD, EW Portal and SmartDD and they’re all pretty similar in the way they work. However after trying them for a while, to me they are all clunky and cumbersone to use and all they do is add a whole new layer of work to be done before you launch your product.

And as someone has already pointed out…yes, you might protect your download page with a script but as soon as someone has downloaded your product or even your entire membership site and its contents legitimately, there is absolutely nothing to stop them uploading the same to any of the numerous file sharing sites and believe me, it happens all the time…even to newly launched products so it’s not just old stuff.

You wouldn’t leave your new flat screen TV or PS3 out in the street to be stolen easily so for what it’s worth, I adopt the following strategy to give your products at lease some degree of protection:

1. As long as there are no internal links from any page on your site to the download page you should be fine but to be doubly sure, you could include a noindex,nofollow on the download page so it shouldn’t show up in the search engines. Put the following two lines of code into the section of your page:

2. As well as in the download directory, You could also put an index.html page in every other directory in the site that doesn’t have one like the ‘images’ directory and so forth as well. Leave as few back doors open to hackers as possible. You can use a blank page, include a sarcastic comment like “Nice try sunshine!!” or populate it with some of your own links.

3. Most people have RoboForm for form-filling web pages so I just use the ‘Generate’ button to produce a completely random directory name for the download page. No-one is ever going to guess it if it looks like ‘BBApmUm7R9′ or whatever.

Best,
Chris Shaw

Hey John,

Another excellent post there mate, I agree that ‘honest’ people will appreciate the work you have spent on the product, and pay for it. However, there are the few who will try anything to save a few bucks!
As you said mate, ‘protection’ is not always the cure, but built-in back links will always protect your investment

Regards,

Dave.

Hey John,

I was one of those people years ago that asked the same thing, I was so worried that people where going to steal my work, I spent hours per week trying to find out how to stop them.

These days I spent all my time building up my business and if someone gets it for free..oh well, hopefully they will like it and subscribe to one of my lists.

Great post and really this should clear it up for the newbies out there…

Regards,

Edson

Hi John, another great post.

I place links within every product i create, so as to bring them back to my sites and affiliated products. I also give my download pages a strange link, rather than Thank-you.html. I don’t get to hung up on it though, as you say if they want it they’ll get it. Many of them will make a purchase and ask for a refund anyway, so it’s not worth losing time or getting stressed about it.

For the folders that contain my Resale Rights items i’ve put a clickbank globe page as an index in them all, every little helps ha ha.

Great advice yet again John,
Respect and Regards, Barry

Hi John,

I do feel that when you are just starting out, that being hung up about protecting your work can be more of hindrance rather than a help.

How do you feel about protecting your work as you have more experience? Are you keen on protecting your own work more now, or not?

I would be interested in hearing your feelings about that.

Take Care,

Paul Power.

That was a very interesting read, and I had never thought that people stealing work could actually work for you. I will take it as a compliment if someone likes my products enough to figure out how to steal them, and I’ll make sure there are plenty of links in there too. What a great idea from Randy about putting a dummy index page in there for any less talented thieves to land on! That idea gave me a giggle!

Hi John,

Thank you for this post!
I never thought about someone stealing my work.
Maybe someday, if that happens, I will be ready
and have more of those links built in!
Thanks for the information – valuable as always!!

Dj
Enjoy every day, it only comes once in a lifetime!

Hey John

Yes great post and I total agree to protecting your business like this – thanks

Protecting our businesses like this is crucial. Great post and many thanks

Hey John,

You have a way of always putting things in perspective. One of the first things you taught me was to not wory about making money. I guess this just follows that strategy. As long as you put out great products and content people will always be there to buy it. And I agree that most people are honest and will pay for your products instead of trying to steel it.

Another great post.

Best,
Bart Nash