Having been in business through several recessions (I had gas stations in 70’s when we had rationing) and financially surviving all but one, I would like to share a few thoughts.

Sometimes we learn most from our failures. In 1989 I had spent most of decade building a thriving business in 2 retail stores. I did not foresee "no name" recession that occurred in 1990 at onset of Gulf War. I opened a third store in another city and used nearly all of my capital reserves in doing so. When war began, people cut back on spending. I experienced a 30% drop in sales almost overnight. With a negative cash flow and no cash reserves, it forced me to borrow money for operating capital. This began a "death spiral" which eventually cost me everything I had worked over 10 years to achieve.

Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back there were steps, if taken early, could have saved my business. If gangrene sets in, sometimes you have to cut off your arm to save your life! Hopefully, this recession has not caught you in "death spiral", but here are a few tips that I learned hard way.

EXPECT THE BEST, PREPARE FOR THE WORST!!

Conserve and preserve some of your capital! Set aside at least 5-10% of your daily revenue into a separate account to be used as a contingency or emergency fund.

You may re-publish this article in your ezine or on your website as long as you include resource box at end of article and make links clickable. Thanks.

INTRODUCTION

Everyday thousands of dollars worth of digital products are being downloaded for free without anyone knowing!

By digital products I am referring to any product that can be downloaded from a web site such as eBooks, software, reports, etc.

The huge increase in sale of digital products on internet has led to need for web site owners to be more vigilant about security.

Many people new to internet are attracted by huge profits that can be made selling digital products. Usually sale of such items involves a visitor clicking on an order link, filling out a form with their credit card details and, once their payment has been approved, being redirected to a download page where product they have just purchased can be immediately accessed.

I do not wish to cause a major panic amongst online community but I have discovered several ways in which products sold online can be downloaded without being paid for.

What's more, there are people searching for these security loopholes so that they can download valuable eBooks and software without paying for them.

I have come across this phenomenon with my own sales web sites, where I have come across people searching for web pages that include download in their name, or trying various combinations of web page names to try and find my products.

This article highlights areas being targeted by unscrupulous web site visitors when they visit your web site trying to find products to download for free.

Your products may be being stolen without your knowledge today, reducing your sales revenue and profit.

At end of this article I will give you details where you can get yourself a comprehensive report that shows you step-by-step how your products may be being downloaded for free and shows you how to prevent this from happening on your site.

THE FIVE PLACES YOU MAY BE EXPOSED

Problem #1 - Search Engines

Your product download pages may have been indexed by major search engines even if they are not apparently linked to your main sales page.

You may think this is not possible, how wrong you are.

When I was researching this topic I was able to find two pages where I could have downloaded products for free this way!

Problem #2 - Paypal

If you are using Paypal to handle payments for your products you are inadvertantly inviting your web site visitors to your download page without paying you first!

The reason for this is that you have to include your product download page as part of your Paypal order link in your HTML.