DLGuard Review: Automating An Ebook Business Using Sales Software
In this DLGuard review I shall cover how this sales software that specializes in sales of digital downloads can be used in starting up your own ebook business. The product isn’t limited to PDF file formats, in fact it can handle anything that can be sent over the web, but ebook publishing has proven to be one of its most popular uses.
After writing ebooks in 2006 I was searching for shopping cart/checkout software to automate the process of sending out download links (in emails) to customers. Other web-masters had posted positive DLGuard reviews online so I gave it a try initially on selling a single ebook.
The product installation is simply a set of scripts so installs on most web servers easily. The scripts have all the web pages and logic for a checkout shopping cart that can manage promotional coupons, multiple product sales and dealing with payment processors to finalize the sale.
Most users will wish to customize how the checkout pages look to match their site and the scripts are written to handle this. If your coding skills aren’t red hot (mine weren’t) then the page design can be outsourced just like with regular web page design.
The power of DLGuard is in how it securely automates the download links. Firstly, it auto-responds to customers with an email that you can (and should) customize. Secondly, it stops the hyperlink being shared with the world by capping the number of download attempts and giving the link validity time period. This will stop the vast majority of link misuse.
After 3 years of use DLGuard has proven itself to be a simple tool to install and operate that covers all the shopping cart functionality I’d ever need. Once you configure the web forms and initialize your inventory of products there is really very little maintenance needed. If your site gets plenty of traffic then it is an economical way to get started in ebook publishing.