best way to get subscribers with free download

  • pederweb

    (@pederweb)


    11 years, 5 months ago

    I’m setting up a functionality that I know has been done tons of times, but I seem to be getting overwhelmed trying to find the best, and simplest, way to do this.

    I’d like to set up a form to get people to subscribe to a newsletter, and then redirect them to a free pdf report download.

    One of my concerns is keeping the PDF, or the page that the PDF is downloaded from, a secret (particularly from search engines), but not password protected. I’m thinking the page url should be encoded or something so that people won’t send the link to all their friends, though, I don’t know what would keep them from just sending the PDF itself.

    Anyhow, I’ve installed and tried all these plugins: Contact Form 7, WordPress Download Monitor, Email Before Downloading, subscribe2, WP Autoresponder, Wysija Newsletters…

    I think the Email Before Downloading is a neat idea, I just don’t like the idea of having the extra step of having to export the email address and then import them to my list – that and having to have 2 other plugins running just to use it…

    I’m getting a headache trying to figure all this stuff out. I’m just starting out, so I need free options.

    Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Andrew Bartel

    (@andrew-bartel)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Check out aweber, you can redirect people to a particular page after they sign up, in this case your newsletter. And, because it’s double opt in, you’ll get much higher deliverability rates. Not free though.

    Thread Starter pederweb

    (@pederweb)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Thanks for the suggestion. I had heard of aweber, but I diidn’t explore it because of the price tag. I’m not in a position yet to put down $20/mo for a newsletter plugin. The double opt in does sound like a good feature, though.

    josiedds

    (@josiedds)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    did you ever figure this out? i’m looking to do the same thing
    (free version)

    Thread Starter pederweb

    (@pederweb)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    The first thing I had to do is just be okay with the idea of people finding and sharing my free report. It’s not a bad thing if you have something that’s good enough that people want to share it.

    What I ended up doing was signing up for a free mailchimp account. They have a double-opt-in capability.

    I also used a plugin called Download monitor. With that it gives you the ability to create a unique URL – one that masks the real one.

    That worked for a while, then it stopped working, and I couldn’t get it working again, so I gave up on it.

    Now, I am using aweber. I use the redirect after the double-opt-in to send people to the pdf. I’m not worried about people sharing it, and I like aweber much better than mailchimp. It’s worth it.

    Hope this helps.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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