Ebook Formatting... PDF versus Kindle versus Clickbank, and?

[kuzzmedia]

Thank you very much.

Very helpful.

Do I put the .htaccess file in the actual directory that I don't want visible or to be indexed? This I presume is the directory where I have the .zip file that contains my ebook? Is that right?

[James]

I would put it in the root directory. You probably already have an .htaccess file so you will just add this line using a basic text editor. You can put it in another directory. It will cover the directory you put it in and any folders inside that one but in my opinion, every site should put this in their root. That way the whole site is covered. Why would anyone want anyone else to have this access on any of their site? It exposes all your image files and anything else you have for anyone who knows how to look.

Here is a link to full information about the use of this file:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

There is a section on how to prevent people from looking at your .htaccess file, too, but your host probably has this covered. If your .htaccess file is in the root, try viewing it first by entering domainname.ext/.htaccess substituting your domain and see. I get a forbidden message. Don't mess with that unless you need to do so.

Some hosts also have set up so the directory listing will not work either but this is less common. At the bottom of the page there are links to other pages describing how to do various things with the .htaccess file including the use of the one we are talking about here.

[kuzzmedia]

Super helpful, James. Thank you so much.

This thread has been really helpful and educational for me in these past weeks. Thank you, folks.

[kuzzmedia]

I have one more related inquiry to this which is not technical.

Is it not in my interest to also have people find my click bank product landing page randomly?

If the product can sell from the pitch page being indexed in search engines, why not still have the pitch page indexible for increased traffic and direct sales?

[kuzzmedia]

So I have an .htaccess file uploaded to the directory where I put my ebook zip file.

It causes the link to the file not to be found, so my question is, is there a command line that I can put in the htaccess file which will still allow the ebook to be accessible and downloaded? With the .htaccess file in the same directory as my ebook zip, the IndexIgnore it just shows the linked file as not existing at all.

Am I missing something?

Almost there...help...

[kuzzmedia]

Update: I got approved yesterday and got my first sale on Clickbank ever today! Woo hoo!

[kuzzmedia]

I am having some frustrating issues.

I have encoded my eBook pdf as "wide open" as I know how so that people can open it.

I put it in a .zip file as Lisa suggested, I link to that zip file and people are having a devil of a time opening it to see the packaged ebook.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm starting to get frustrated because I have sales. I thought I went about this the right way, but it's frustrating many people who can't open it and I have no clue why. As I said, I have encoded the PDF with no security. I condense it on my mac into a ZIP.

I just don't get what the problem is but I want to get it fixed asap because I keep losing real sales.

I don't want to put up a pdf directly, right? Then the contents can be indexed into search engines, right? I am frustrated but I don't want to give up. I want to learn this right so I can deal without issues.

Darn.

[kuzzmedia]

I did not have luck with the htaccess procedure. It made everything in the directory invisible including the file I wanted to download. I have wanted things to be "secure," but it hasn't been as easy as I'd like.

Can I ask, what program are you encoding your PDF with?

I have done it with WORD, And with Adobe Acrobat PRO.

Appreciate feedback on this one so I can master this process once and for all.