DLGuard is a software solution for selling digital downloads securely from your own web server. The tool allows authors to independently sell digital products while building up their own customer mailing lists. The focus of this DLGuard review is to show how useful it is for securely automating sales in an ebook business. But it is worth highlighting that this sales tool will work just as well with any type of digital product (MP3s/software/zip files/etc).
The DLGuard application is a series of scripts that manage the various stages of on-line sales. This goes from the very start of the process where users will want to define their inventory of ebook files, add ‘Buy Now’ links or buttons on their web pages, lead the customer through the checkout process and send automated emails to the customer with a download link to the ebook.
The checkout phase in DLGuard is able to handle a number of possible sales types. The simplest sales type is the sale of a single product or item. If your ebook business follows a publisher style business model then the application facilitates customers with a shopping basket to store items before checkout. Lastly selling website memberships (monthly sales) can also be managed. If you have free downloads then you could also use the single-item sales approach (omitting the payment step) in order to capture customer email addresse.
My initial use of the product was intended purely for selling ebooks online on four separate websites. I have also used it for providing free download links to small software applications. Note that the product license has a two domain usage limit so the initial configuration I used had DLGuard installed on one server which handled the checkout stage for all four sites.
Installing the product took less than a half hour to complete. Setting up my inventory of files to make available for download took a little longer. As did adding buy now hyperlinks to 4 of my sites. Within a few days DLGuard was already fully managing the checkout process, dealing with Paypal and sending customers their download links.
Long term, I will expand out my sites with membership areas using DLGuard and provide some value-added eBooks in detailing my approach to writing plug-ins for application and how to sell software on-line. DLGuard facilitates this advanced functionality out of the box and the current trend toward membership sites highlights the benefit of receiving such a passive income stream regularly.
When I first evaluated DLGuard, I compared it to the large web services online. While these services provide a huge potential audience I preferred to control capturing a database of customer email addresses. Building such a customer database facilitates cross selling opportunities further down the road to loyal customers.
The sole problem with the product is the 2 domain license limit. In my situation the workaround was to run DLGuard on a single server to handle the checkout and sales from my 4 websites. This did mean the page design for the checkout stage had to be kept neutral rather than matching the color schemes of the 4 sites.
In conclusion, the goal of any download sales management tool is that it securely handles inventory, check-out and payment processing with little or no intervention on the owners part. DLGuard has done this admirably leaving me more time to focus on writing ebooks and sourcing other business opportunities.
If you enjoyed this DLGuard review, then be sure to check out our site for articles on writing ebooks and sofware and selling them online