DLGuard Review – Software For Automating Sales In An Ebook Business

Posted on May 15, 2010 | Category: Software Reviews

The DLGuard download sales software has enabled thousands of web-masters to simply set up an integrated shopping cart/checkout and download tool into their own websites. This DLGuard review focuses on using it to completely automate the running of an ebook business.

Since 2005 I have been writing ebooks and reselling other author’s work (legitimately) independently of the large online sellers. While they can provide a lot of traffic you lose out on capturing customer data for mailing lists. A colleague recommended DLGuard as a suitable shopping cart application to try.

The software is a set of scripts to integrate into your website that deliver the checkout pages & logic for you, along with promo coupon support and integration with payment processors. The scripts themselves can be customized to resemble your website design.

Once a sale completes is where DLGuard really comes into its own, in ebook business terms. The application emails the customer with a unique download hyper-link for their ebook purchase. Securing the link from being shared is critical at this point to stop multiple copies of your IP (intellectual property) being downloaded. DLGuard configures (i) the validity period and (ii) maximum download attempts for the link. This is a simple and effective way of securing the link.

After the initial set up and (optional) re-branding of the checkout pages it requires little manual intervention for it to keep processing sales and downloads. When refund requests come in the tools tracking data can highlight if the requester has repeatedly asked for refunds (which signals that they are scammers merely skimming your ebook inventory for their own gain).

As entry level tools go, DLGuard is a secure and simple to use cart that automates the bulk of ebook publishing/sales. Using it does not preclude the use of online sales sites; rather it should complement this and enable you to build your own mailing lists of customer for your future publishing campaigns.

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