Using Temporary Download Links To Help Your Business
Free products, action incentives, and purchase bonuses can
be utilized by many online businesses to benefit themselves
and their customers.
A consideration for many business is theft of product files.
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Sharing download links.
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Taking the downloads without providing a valid email
address or completing other required actions.
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Finding the purchase confirmation page and helping
themselves to the purchase bonuses without buying
anything.
Those are all forms of theft.
While some downloads might not have an out of pocket cost
whenever a copy is downloaded, income or other benefits
can be lost when downloads are done illegally.
Rarely do businesses give something away without considering
how the business might benefit.
Purchase bonuses encourage spending money with the business.
When the purchase is bypassed, the business loses sales.
Incentives to perform a certain action, such as provide
an email address or answer a personal question, encourage
cooperation. When the incentive is downloaded without the
requested action being performed, the business loses out on
benefits it would otherwise have.
And then there's download link sharing.
Master Form V4 with its "Temporary Download Links" plug-in
can eliminate link sharing.
When downloads first require information be provided with a
web page form, Master Form V4 with its plug-in can handle
the form submission *and*
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Hide the location of the "thank you" page.
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Hide the location of the email templates.
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Generate one or more temporary download links and
insert them into the "thank you" page and/or into
outgoing email.
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Remove all temporary files associated with a link
after the link expires.
Once it's set up, it just works.
You'll find the Master Form V4 and plug-in description
pages, respectively, at
/master/formV4/
/master/formV4/TDLplugin.shtml
When you finish the article, you'll want those links.
Just remember where they are and you can find them again.
Ways Temporary Download Links Can Help Your Business
When selling digital products, prevent link sharing with
temporary product download links.
Provide incentives for subscribing or taking other actions
with temporary download links. To authenticate email
addresses, provide the download link only in an email.
Use temporary download links to prevent spreading the URLs
to your bonuses without your permission.
Use temporary links (and shout that they're temporary) to
encourage people to take advantage of your generosity right
now rather than later (so they don't forget).
"Buy" information your business can use (demographics, for
example, or thoughts about ways your products or services
can be improved) in exchange for temporary download links
to some awesome digital items.
Temporary download links can relieve site owners of having
to remember to remove expired links.
Realizing More Benefits When Giving Away Free Stuff
At first thought, it might seem that getting the free stuff
(previews, samples, ebooks, whatever) downloaded by all with
a modem would be the business' objective. But that's often
not the best objective.
In almost all cases, getting the preview opened or the
sample used or the ebook read are more important than
distributing the free item to the masses.
It has to be distributed before it can benefit the business.
Yet, focusing too hard on distribution can lose the benefits.
Why?
Consider how many free things you download and never take
seriously. Maybe you open them up just to see what you got.
Or maybe you save them in a "someday, if I'm still
interested" folder.
Many people download and forget. They mean to get to it, but
life interferes and their interests go somewhere else.
Preferably, your competitors' free stuff lies dormant and
forgotten on your prospects' computers while yours is taken
seriously.
Which ones do people take seriously? Which ones do they open
immediately, while they're still interested? The ones they
think are valuable — not necessarily because the pitch says
they are, but because they perceive the value for themselves.
There are ways to increase the perceived value of a free
download.
One way is to limit the download link to a fast approaching
time. "This link is still good for another 3 hours and 21
minutes" will get more real interest than "Click here to
download the goodie and don't forget to tell all your
friends." The perception that it's possible to lose out
on the download instantly increases the perceived value.
Another way is to require an email address up front. Those
who won't provide an email address are the very ones who
would never perceive the value anyway. But the ones who do
exchange something valuable for the download and give their
trust that the business won't abuse it. This increases
perceived value. The perceived value of the download can be
heightened even more by making it a temporary download link
set to expire soon.
As mentioned earlier, the way to ensure a valid email
address is to deliver the temporary download link with an
email sent to that address. And Master Form V4 with its
"Temporary Download Links" plug-in can handle the whole
thing for you.
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Will Bontrager
©Copyright 2006 Bontrager Connection, LLC Bontrager Connection, LLC
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