PayPal Companion
After putting my special report up for sale on my site some time
ago, there were many more downloads of the report than people who
had
purchased it. And I mean TONS more, according to my log files! Many
people had warned me that when you sell digital stuff using PayPal
as
your credit card processor, it's easy as pie for any savvy hacker
to
download your stuff for free. Now, it's possible that I was reading
my logs incorrectly, but I set out to search for a secure solution.
I found some software that could encrypt code, and I found some
PHP
solutions, but nothing I tried actually worked very well. The idea
of
paying $20 or $30 for a few lines of code didn't really appeal to
me
either, especially when I wasn't sure how hack-proof it was.
Then I stumbled across PayPal Companion. I didn't realize it at
the
time, but it is a fairly new service that had been in the testing
phase. This is a third-party-hosted service as opposed to software.
They store all the information about your download page in their
database on their server, and there's no way for a hacker to gain
access to it. You just fill in a bit of information and they
automatically generate the tiny bit of code you need to place on
your
site (which replaces the normal PayPal code). I like the fact that
it's a service, although it means you have to pay on a yearly basis.
It just gives me more peace of mind knowing that someone else is
watching out for my data, rather than having to rely on my skills
(or
lack thereof) to encrypt my pages. I figure if you want something
done right, you should hire the experts.
The expert in this case is a programmer named Dean Brenner. He's
been
selling tons of stuff on PayPal for years and has the process down
pat. His support was great! We had some very late-night emails in
order to make sure I got set up okay, and he answered my questions
and
solved my problems even over the weekend. To me, that's worth paying
a few extra bucks for! The good news is that it's not very expensive
to use. If you've only got one product and want to set it up for
one
quarter, the price is only $15. Depending on what your needs are,
Dean's got a whole bunch of different pricing options.
I've had PayPal Companion up and running for many months now,
and my stats are not showing any unauthorized downloads. So far,
so good! If you have a need for this sort of thing, I highly recommend
you check them out here.
Jill
Update August 3, 2003 - PayPalCompanion apparently was down for a few days last week, and I was not notified about this. Nobody could order my report on my PayPal order page during this time. I emailed Dean about it, but never received a response. During this time, I switched my order form to ClickBank in order not to miss any orders. It appears that PayPalCompanion is back up and running, and I have switched my order form accordingly; however, I will keep a close eye on it for awhile. (ClickBank's rates are a bit higher than PayPal's so I prefer to use PayPal when I can.) - J
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