Safe Selling on Clickbank

In the non-internet world, retailers are always fighting a war with shoplifters and people who would take your product without paying for it.  You would think that this kind of thing would not be a problem in an online world.  But in Clickbank which is the largest internet marketplace in the world, one of the biggest problems is stopping people from downloading a digital product and then not following through with payment.

Like any other retail setting there are security weaknesses in Clickbank as there are with any software environment.  But with some proper caution on the part of the vendor at the individual level, you can find ways to plug those security holes and keep your product secure so every time it gets downloaded, you get paid.

In reality we sometimes are our own worst enemies when we become Clickbank merchants because we do some things that undermine the security Clickbank already has in place.  The first thing to recognize when you market on Clickbank is that it is off limits to put links to your product files on Clickbank on one of your other website pages.  Don�t try to extend the marketing by driving traffic to your Clickbank pages in this way.  For proper security, the only way your customers should be able to download your product is after going through the normal Clickbank payment pages which enforce that payment is made before delivery.  This is one very simple precaution to keep someone from getting to your content and bypassing the payment procedure.

Another good reason not to put links to your product on your web site is that it will cause this back door to your products to appear on the search engines as links others can use.  Google will find the links and index them and they could appear fairly high in search engine rankings and that is very dangerous for the security of your product.  

Some risks that your product page could get leaked are outside of your control.  There are internet thieves who would collect your thank you page and product URL where and post them on newsgroups and forums devoted to underground theft of online products.  The actual amount of thefts you might have from that happening is fairly small.  The real problem is if those postings get picked up and listed on a search engine. Then you could have a serious security risk.

There is one step that will eliminate the search engine problem which is the bigger risk of your thank you or product pages for Clickbank getting "out there".  That is to contact your web hosting provider.  They have a way at the server level to build a customized security file that is checked by the search engines to exclude certain files form becoming indexed.  By adding the URL for your products page on Clickbank as well as your thank you page, even if those links get listed, you stop the bleeding in its place so the amount of losses will be quite minimal.

However this approach must be used with extreme caution.  The file that many web hosting servers used is called the robots.txt file.  The problem is that hackers are very aware of that file as much as search engines are.  And if a hacker can find that file, and they can, that opens the door for the locations of your product files to be stolen and then posted on another web site which opens the whole can of worms all over again.

The best thing is not to reference those locations at all so if there is going to be any leakage of their location, it will be through hackers whose influence is minimal at best.  That way at least you are living a clean life and doing what you can.  And by watching the Clickbank FAQ and updates notices so you are always up to date on any new security updates they are putting in place.