Protect your eBook:

Advice for SBI Owners

You follow the gurus’ advice: build a website rich in useful content.

I have attempted to do that here.

Then in June I created a multipage pdf or eBook about very real people who have had their personal identities stolen and the heartache and expense of trying to restore their financial credit standing.

This exercise taught me how to create and upload a pdf onto my SBI website.

A few weeks later, I offered my first commercial eBook entitled The Last Dollar You Will Ever Spend to Build Your Downline.

It was a mouthful but I was able to build a “product launch” around it that included press releases and learned how to add a “buy button” to my website.

One press release was picked up almost immediately by Google, and sat at the top of its search engine results for “build a downline” for nearly a month.

All this was training for my first major product, which I hope to launch next month.

I did not bother to copyright “The Last Dollar…” At a buck a copy, it was hardly worth the investment.

I was disappointed though in the conversion rate for my guide. The manual garnered only three sales. I wondered about it, but I was busy doing other things.

On Sunday, September 29, I ran a site search to see how many pages on my website Google has indexed. Near the top of the 92 pages was the download page for my dollar eBook!

What the heck?

I immediately checked the SBI tracking data and discovered a dozen visitors who had landed on that page without paying for the right to download my manual.

I quickly posted my experience on SBI’s forum. (This is an SBI site). Within a couple of hours computer expert Monte Russell, owner of DIY Computer Repair, sent me the information I needed to plug the hole in my security.

Another SBI computer expert in New Zealand, AJ, offers specific advice tailored to the needs of SBI owners about protecting their eBooks. SBIers will want to read AJ's how-to Protect Your eBook before you upload a pricey information product to your site.

The likelihood that a person who steals your work has deep pockets is slim. Still, if you have access to an attorney as I do, then the first question he’s likely to ask is if you’ve copyrighted your book. Copyrighting your eBook will give you much better odds of getting a settlement should your property be stolen by someone who turns around and sells it under his own name after making a few minor modifications.