This message is about the second incident from yesterday which caused some errors during the order process (only 5-8 buyers were affected by this, though…).
Basically, it all started well. I sent out an email for my buddy Dirk Wagner’s latest “Crazy Deal” and it was for a script which can link your keywords to Clickbank products or to your own product offers. They appear like those Kontera ads when you hover with your mouse over them (a popup with a product title and a link to the actual offer).
It seems that many of my subscribers liked the offer because there were quite a lot of sales for it. That was the positive aspect. The negative one was that I noticed that the number of sales in my stats for Dirk’s deal was different from the number of Paypal notifications I received. Something must have gone wrong, I thought. It had never happened before that there was such a difference between the stats and the actual Paypal receipts.
So I called Dirk on the phone in order to verify the stats and we noticed that there were names in my list which didn’t appear in my Paypal sales stats. Since everything can be tracked individually, we even could find out the names of the ones who did a “freeload”. I won’t go into the details here but people who know the script from the inside out (maybe because they are using it themselves), know how to access the product on someone else’s server as well because of the whole setup.
In order to close this loophole, I suggested Dirk should rename some of the files for the download pages. And this worked. After he did this, no further “freeloaders” were caught trying to trick the script.
This caused a temporary failure on some regular orders as well. Because of the renamed files, something went wrong with another associated file. And since that other file was written in CGI, we didn’t know how to fix it immediately. So basically during half an hour or so, some people made orders and couldn’t access their download. We are really sorry about this but we had to take measures against the product thieves. They all should have gotten their product by now as we tried to get back to these buyers as quickly as possible.
Next time, the URLs will be secured in advance to close the loophole even before it comes up. And with that said, I hope, you’ll understand everything from the seller’s point of view as well and that this doesn’t stop you from taking me up on my next offers. I’m trying to give back here so you can learn from my mistakes. As soon as you’re selling your own products, you will understand this.
This kind of thing will happen all the time (I am NOT condoning it!), but it really makes you think, as a webmaster that “have all the loopholes been closed?”.
The practice will continue until everyone knows about it and does something about it (does that make sense?)
Take care when using scripts like this – it can be too easy to “steal” using this method.
As you say, when you sell your own products – you get to know these things!
Enough ranting . . .
Regards
Jo
http://www.cheviotmarketing.com/100PS
(some of these can be helpful!)
Hi Detlev,
In recent Internet marketing giveaways of plr and resale rights products, I’ve noticed a big difference in the number of subscribers and actual downloads. In fact, a large number of those who subscribe never actually download their products, even though the autoresponders work perfectly and the downloads are where they should be. I believe this is caused by email filters.
However, I have also had a problem with a 100 percent commission product that I sold some time ago, where a third party PayPal script did not send the buyer to the third party download page after payment. Since then I have avoided using affiliate links which include a PayPal address.
Keep up your good work!
Mitch Russo
Hey Detlev: Sorry about this thieving business. There are a few ***holes in the world. Thank god they are only a teeny minority. It truly ticks me off, because a tiny percentage of criminals make it difficult for the vast majority of honest folks. It’s like terrorism writ small, meaning it is difficult to hit such a little moving target, so the victims of their actions have to undertake measures that punish everyone. But, this will probably not deter those determined to reak havoc. That’s what they do. They look for ways to undermine the system. Unfortunately, the damage is not limited to just the crime they commit, it’s the long term effect of their crime that is the bigger crime. Take airport security for instance – who is punished for terrorists? We are. The entire security business is based on this fear. And yet, and we have to try and keep it in perspective, otherwise we’ll give up – it is only a minuscule portion of the world like this. I don’t have an answer, because I am reluctant to take on the fear demeanor, yet I understand that might leave me open to this type of attack. These bottom dwellers get way more energy than they deserve. They are like cancer.
It’s hard to keep an attitude of trust in the Universe when I hear things like this. Again, I am sorry and I hope you figure things out. It’s just too bad that you have to do all that extra work, and be defended, when it should be unnecessary.
Blessings,
Angelina
Sad there are so many who do not want to play legally. It happens in the “print product” world too. I’ve found folks selling expensive print courses on eBay and other sales sites who pass them off as original. Some are VERY poor presentations indeed. Many will contact you after you lose an auction. Suddenly more became “available” doncha know! It took a LONG time to get eBay and PayPal to stop sales. If you report copyright thieves, be prepared to have patience sometimes. Seems the middlemen aren’t too willing to stop this kind of theft sometimes when they get fees from thieves. I usually contact authors directly now to let them know when thieves are stealing their work. What’s depressing is how the shady ones acted like they were entitled to scam. I sold information about computers on a disk many years ago and had a custom label that was hard to duplicate. This guy asked for a refund for an illegally copied disk and got angry when I refused after he described the label. Threatened to report ME. He also would not tell me where he got the copied disk. I have heard of a teacher who copies music from CDs kids bring in, so they are teaching another generation that copyright means nothing. I’m glad you followed up Mr R. It’s not only musicians who get taken nowadays.