Michelle Prefers

 
So I’ve been selling my books in e-book form since 2002 and let me tell you, I’ve learned a lot in the last 6 years.

At first my books that were made via PDFs were never secure, therefore had any kind of PDF protection.

This meant that anyone could pass them along to others and I would be losing sales, or someone could sell my book as theirs and once again, I would be losing sales.

Eventually I started on the hunt to finding software Digital Rights Management (DRM) that would protect my e-books, but all I encountered was stress.

1. The first company I went with back in 2002 was a programmer out in New York. His software was difficult to use at times, and if he did respond to e-mails, it took him weeks. Getting him to return my calls was also a challenge, but I found out later on that I was really lucky, some of the companies who purchased his more expensive package at $2,500, never received even one phone call back.That’s what happens a lot of the time when you deal with geeks who are running a company. 90% of them aren’t real business people, they just launch a product or service and everyone suffers because they have no customer service skills, and their customers usually end up being very stressed.I remember twice being petrified when I couldn’t do something with the software or I couldn’t provide the books to my customers which they had already paid for. This was because there were these problems.As you know, I’m HUGE on customer service, so if my customers couldn’t open their book because of this security software, I knew I was ultimately responsible, and would end up looking like a fool.After using him for around a year (it was a while ago, I really can’t remember), I switched to a new e-book security software company.
2. While I had paid a flat price of $199 for the first guy, this new company charged per month. I knew I was going to be paying out a lot more money every year, but protecting my ebooks was and is very important to me. I had to hire someone to encrypt all the files, and it cost me around $300 to get that process done and up on my server so my customers could download my books and then open them with their key.Just to be clear, my e-books aren’t just one file as many other authors’ ebooks are.I don’t really consider them books anymore, they are more like business kits.Anyway, within the first 6 months or so (it’s all mentioned on another blog of mine), I started to have problems with this company.They were having problems with their software, and me and my customers were paying the price.The owner would NEVER pick up the phone, I think I got him on the phone once in the 3 years I was with him, and once he sternly told me for the price I’m paying of course there is no phone support, ONLY e-mail support. I was shocked he spoke to me in that manner.He was not a very nice person in my opinion. He had that arrogant attitude as if he was my customer and I was to bow down to him. Not that I think customers should be arrogant, but I hope you know what I mean.I took an instant dislike to him.The tech support person he hired (may have been his girlfriend) was terrible. She could never understand a word I was saying, and every time there was a problem, me or someone in my company figured out the solution to the problem before she ever did.At first I thought it was just her having a bad day, but then it happened over & over again, she could barely comprehend what was being relayed to her, and no, I don’t think she was from overseas, I’m pretty sure she lived in Canada like the owner did.I complained about her to the owner, but all he did was stick up for her. LOL, of course, why listen to your customers. They aren’t right, your ego is.I was basically held hostage by this company because I couldn’t find another company that offered a great service to secure my e-books at a price I was willing to pay.Some of the larger companies were charging like $10,000 - LOL, yeh right, no small company is going to pay that kind of money.Eventually I had my assistant dealing with that techi, but he had the same problems I did.

   Granted there weren’t problems every week or every month, but when there were problems, they were HUGE.

   One year I had to work through my New Years Eve trying to fix the problem because I had two customers waiting days for their book.

   The owner passed the problem onto his techi and while she did “try” to help, in the end, he & her blamed the problem on me because I was clueless on what to change/fix on my end since I’m NOT a techi person.

   Just to be clear here, there was NO warning they were even going to be changing things around, this was all a last minute to me, & a bit of advice to ALL companies:

   NEVER make technical changes to hosted software that affects your customers in real time:

   a) before you have given them at least 1-2 weeks notice
   b) just before any kind of holiday
   c) during peak hours, meaning all changes should be made in the wee hours of the morning when most of your customers are asleep, & so are their customers

   The owner & the techi went off on vacation leaving me holding the bag. The owner even had the nerve to tell me I was cutting into his vacation time & I should be so happy with his level of support because I was keeping him from the holiday season.

   At night time either very close to midnight or after the New Year, me & a new team member finally figured out the problem together in 15 minutes. Once again, his techi didn’t communicate clearly to me, she didn’t tell me exactly what to do, so what took days & hours of stress was really a 15 minute fix.

   I was furious, but had no choice but to stay with them.

   After twice searching around looking for a new company to replace this one, we gave up, but recently we tried searching again for PDF Protection, or Digital Rights Management (DRM) again about 4 months ago…

3. I was VERY excited to find another company that seemed not only good, but they were less expensive because they charge you for tokens (1 per key), not per month.It took a while to investigate them, understand how they do things (their system was easier), get the files re-wrapped, and the instructions written out for customers, but we FINALLY started using them and I have to say I’m impressed. I am also pretty sure my books are more secure with them then they were with both the first and second company.They return e-mails within 36 hours or so & on the odd occasion within 24 hours, so yes, they can be a little more swift, but they may just be going through some growing pains because they just recently launched a new product.I don’t find the tech support person very friendly, but that’s fine, so long as the problems are solved, that’s all that matters.They have even credited me tokens when their system had problems, which was very nice of them.They have also taken some of my suggestions and hopefully development will be implementing them soon. Their user interface is very clean and easy to use once you know what you are doing.If there are any problems I encounter, it’s either because my customer doesn’t read the instructions properly, which is obviously the customer’s issue, not ours or this security company’s.Like I mentioned, if their system is causing problems, they fix it immediately and credit me any tokens I may have lost.So I’ve been with them long enough now so that I feel comfortable referring them to you if you are selling e-books online.That new product they launched I don’t need, but if you are looking for a way to sell your e-books via your own site, etc. then they now offer this monthly service that covers everything so you can start selling almost immediately.I already have my own sites, download area and shopping cart, so I don’t need all of that, but if you are new at selling ebooks, you have to get this entire package, because there’s no other way for your customers to purchase, download, & then open their books or files.Oh, & they help teach you about how to market your books to sell, so essentially start an ebook business, and remember, securing e-books is not the only thing this software can do, if you need to secure PDFs for your company, it’s the same process, it’s just PDF files, not books.So once again, here is the link you can go to and check it out…

Let me know what you think, and if you need help wrapping your e-book files, I can get my assistant to do it for you, since he already knows how.

Just shoot me an e-mail and we’ll discuss pricing.

I really  hope you enjoy this secure software company, I’m really happy I no longer have to worry about this most important crucial element of selling e-books online.

Michelle

So anyone who cares about business HAS to have online survey software. You have to know what your customers are thinking, or people who aren’t your customers yet, are thinking, so you can gauge what you need to sell, change, concentrate on, address, etc.

I came across Survey Gizmo several months ago because I use Word Press, and it’s the software Word Press uses for surveys. In fact it plugs into Word Press.

I started to use it, and hands down it’s much better than Survey Monkey, not to mention they are a lot nicer over at Survey Gizmo. I had a very negative experience with Survey Monkey years ago which I never forgot, the owner or whoever was nasty to me, so I shied away from them and hadn’t really thought about surveys until recently when I was taking a business course that pointed out that we as entrepreneurs HAVE to get inside our client’s or non-clients’ heads, and giving out surveys is one great way to do that.

Survey Gizmo is CONSTANTLY upgrading the software and they take our suggestions VERY seriously which is very rare for any company to do.

In fact they are growing so much, they just brought on a new VP of Sales and Business Development guy who has 15 years experience being a netreprenuer.

I don’t even use most of their features such as data collection, polls, questionnaires, web forms, quizzes and landing pages for marketing. I basically stick to the surveys and use them for market research, customer service as well as to figure out what my clients need.

I already have tons of surveys created and they are out there online collecting data both on my sites and my blogs.

I even use their survey software to complete a sale, so if I have to ask questions to complete the sale, I use Survey Gizmo so I don’t have to get a programmer to create a new form for me.

They even have a free package, but after analyzing the other packages, I had to get the Pro Account.

Let me know what you think!

Michelle

Without a doubt, backing up your computer so you can later on restore it, is VERY VERY important.

You don’t even have to be in business for yourself for this to be one of THE most important needs for every computer user. (more…)