Digital Product Protection – How I Stop The Thieves!

When I created my first digital product, protection from thieves wasn’t a concern of mine at the time, but it should have been.

When glancing at my hosting logs recently I saw that my digital ebook product download page had visitors downloading the ebook several times a month without any sales being made.

 I was sick! A product I spent months planning and creating was simply stolen right out from under me.

But what could I do?

Many experts will tell you that there’s not much you can do to stop digital product theft, but don’t believe it.  There are a few ways to stop the thieves.

The Search For Digital Product Protection

There are several solutions for protecting your digital products,  so where do you start?

I began visiting forums and talking to colleagues. Interestingly enough  DLGuard was the most recommended.  Because it had the most positive comments and reviews from its users,   I gave it a test run.

The product installs on your host server and requires a one time payment.  There’s no monthly service, which I liked and  I can use one purchase of  DLGuard for all my products.

So to start, I chose to use it for an ebook that I sell through Clickbank.  By the way,  DLGuard is also fully integrated with PayPal, 2Checkout, Click2Sell, eBay and all the major payment processors.  Depending on the payment processor you have, there is a separate instruction set to follow and the steps couldn’t be easier, I had my setup completed and tested in about 45 minutes.

What About Digital Product Protection On Returned Products?

As much as I like DLGuard, I still had one problem. How do I secure my digital product in the event that a customer requests a refund?

DLGuard doesn’t do that, in fact most digital theft protection products don’t.   So once a customer has my product on his hard drive, there’s no way to get it back if  they want a refund.

I don’t get many refunds, but it doesn’t matter how great a product you have,  there are individuals that game the system requesting refunds because they know they can still keep the product.  So, I went back to the forums to see if there was a solution.

The comment that came up a lot was there’s really no way to keep your product out of the hands that already have it, but I did find a product called Product Padlock.  It protects your product from thieves with password protection which disables a user from using your product after you’ve issued a refund.

You can check out the Product Padlock video for exactly how it works here

My Best Choice For Protecting my Digital Products From Theft

After careful thought  I still want to protect my products from people downloading them for free, which is what both DLGuard and Product Padlock do.  However the additional protection that Product Padlock offers with password protection caused me to rethink my concern.

The annoyance of giving my customers one more password to remember didn’t thrill me.   I get so few customer returns that I’m not sure the added security is worth the aggravation to my customers.  And because Product Padlock is delivered as a monthly subscription service, it does cost more.  But if you like the password protection idea, Product Padlock got some of the best reviews.

Personally I’ve chosen to stick with DLGuard.  I think it’s the best in terms of price, performance and support.  I haven’t tried every product out there but I can’t imagine another product being any simpler or more thorough with friendly,  prompt support.  It’s also more important to me that  my customers have an easy way to access my product without making them jump through hoops.

Do  you protect your digital products?  What are your thoughts?