Hello JBEnt,
Welcome to the 5 Star forums; I hope you enjoy your stay here.
For my answer, I'm going to assume that your mention of "downloadable to the buyer" means you plan to sell your ebook.
Linda's right that a lot of people go through ClickBank, PayDotCom, e-Junkie, or even PayLoadz when it comes to selling their digital products. It's actually one of the easiest ways to do it. These companies simply take a small transaction fee for each sale (and some also require an initial set up fee, but nothing exuberant), which helps them with their overhead costs -- some will even
host the files for you (e-junkie and PayLoadz, if I'm not mistaken).
If you plan to go it alone, then you'll need to make sure you have some way to protect your product from unauthorized downloads -- one great way is with some type of IPN verification software and download protector. One that receives a number of recommendations is
DLGuard. Though it's not free, it offers some great features, including download link expiration and top-notch support. (Nope, not affiliated with them in any way.)
To upload the files to your server, while you may not need special software if your host provides a control panel (i.e. cPanel), it would come in handy. The one you choose would depend on your operating system, however, I personally use and have no problems recommending
FileZilla -- a free and open source FTP program.
Personally, I use my own home-grown script to manage my ebook sales mainly because I needed a solution that integrated with my WP set up and already had a system in place that worked for me. That may be an option for you if you're into programming and can whip something up for yourself. Lemme know if you'd like more info on that and I'd be happy to point you in the direction of a few good APIs.
Finally, if you're offering up the download for people who subscribe to your list, I don't suggest you place the link on your actual
redirected thank you page, but on your confirmation thank you page. Yep, there's a difference.
I'll share a secret with you -- I generally don't sign up for those e-mail squeeze pages. Instead, I just snag the thank you page from the source code (not too difficult if you're using Firefox) and download the file. Now, I'm not the only one who does this. What you can do is make it more difficult by requiring the reader to
confirm their e-mail address in order to get the download link.
If I had my way, of course, there'd be no need for a squeeze page. Instead, provide great content in the ebook and
ask the reader to sign up to your e-mail list. Chances are, if you provide some good content and a promise of receiving more, most people will do it.
I truly hope this helps out.
~ Teli
Ebook downloading
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