You MUST avoid this as a product owner

Just a little story from the real world.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by a well known marketer to check out and promote a CB product which apparently felt into the "Urgent Niches", you know, a hungry crowd which need a solution NOW.

I have to say that the email did come from the product owner, using 2 other names from marketers which did not endorse the copy in any way, so I actually don't know if they really did stand behind the promotion.

Well, by looking at the niche, it really seamed like a good idea to start some promotion.

Like so many times I got distracted by something else and the days passed by and I did nothing. This time I guess to my benefit.

2 days ago I received another email offering a review copy, because marketer x & y told to offer one so I would know what I will promote.

OK, great, I asked for one and got it today.

Right from the bat I thought that something is strange, cause the PDF was dated 2009? A 4 year old product which is launching now?

I thought by myself "Maybe that is a relaunch and they forgot to edit the date on the PDF" so I did a simple trick.

I took the filename of the pdf and put it into Google to see what appears.....

OH MY GOD....

I got the exact SAME PDF offered as a free download at several sites, incl. PDF sharing sites and even worse, the ORIGINAL Clickbank website was also at first page with the PDF indexed for a download, just have to click at it.

That product is sold at $67 bucks, so it's not a cheap product.

So if you are a product owner, please always make sure that..

- Update your Product at least every second year. Doesn't matter if you can add stuff or not, but make it look like up to date. Maybe you can research a few details and add new inputs from the market.

- ALWAYS make the file name of your downloads something impossible to remember or to guess , and make sure that you have a no index rule in your robot txt for that file so it won't get indexed. Anyhow, sometimes Google index a file even with a no index so the best solution would be that you deliver your products over a Membership access which makes it harder to pirate your products.

Last, always check those details first, BEFORE you invite other marketers for a JV to push your product or the results can be counter productive.

I don't mention any names on purpose so people involved can fix this, as I have emailed the product owner about the issues.

Any more ideas, feel free to give your 5 bucks (I think 2cts are not enough)

G.