Re: Payment processing

On Thu 14 October 2004 22:13, Debbie O'Meara wrote:
> Hi all--
>
> I'm working on a site that will sell ebooks. I think the way for it to
> work will be for a customer to submit a payment, then have an
> autoresponder email a link to download the book.  The client does not have
> a merchant account, but does work with PayPal.  I've looked at that
> mechanism in PayPal and it looks fairly complex for those of us who aren't
> programmers.  Any other suggestions?

Well, there are plenty of other possibilities, but the choice will depend in a 
large part as to where on the globe you are located.

> Also...If I send someone a link to download a book they paid for, they can
> easily forward that email to someone else, who can download the book for
> free.  What's the best way to avoid this?

Each payment would allow the user to access the ebook through a unique 
(generated) link.
If you wanted to be strict, you could check and make sure only one download 
happened through that link, when the download is completed, invalidate the 
link.
A simpler approach is to have the link valid for (e.g.) 24hrs and then 
invalidate it. 

The first method has the problem that if a download doesn't complete (bad 
connection for instance) the customer loses out and you will get complaints 
to deal with.

Partly it depends on the value of the ebooks. If you are selling them for 
hundreds of dollars, then you will want to make sure no-one downloads them 
for free. But if you are only charging a few dollars its much easier to live 
with the possibility that someone might forward the link on to a friend.

In any case, it would be easier for them to simply forward the complete book, 
but that is another issue.

HTH

jalal

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