Free Downloads from a Commercial Site

To get traffic and return visitors to your commercial website, a good tactic to use is to offer free downloads. But the last thing that you want is to pay for people to take everything you offer with nothing in return. A bit like throwing money into the street. One very interesting solution is revealed in this article that I am free to reprint:

Conversion Secrets for Free Downloads to Paid Customers
By Sean Cohen

Do you give web site visitors the opportunity to download a free trial of your product or service with the intention that they will come back and purchase? How are you following up with these visitors? Asking them to fill out a form and immediately giving them the download on the next page is not the best way to generate a quality opt-in list. Collecting accurate opt-in information from these visitors is essential to follow up education and making the sale.

Download giveaway opt-in conversion is extremely simple when done with the correct process. Unfortunately many businesses are leaving significant profits and subscribers on the table by using the wrong methods.

Wrong Way:

A visitor comes to your site and they fill out a form to request your free download. Upon submission of the form they are taken to your thank you page where you provide the link to download.

This person has been given your download but you have not given them a reason to subscribe to your list. They might have given you a fake email address and in all likelihood did give you a fake email knowing that they just need to get to the next page to receive your information. Since you can't follow up with them you might have lost a sale.

Correct Way:

Insert the AWeber opt-in form on your site. Within eye site of this form provide information about the importance of subscribing to your list. Add value to your list by giving them compelling reasons to subscribe. Make it clear that the download link will be provided in the email they receive after confirming their subscription.

On your thank you page (or redirect page) they are taken to after they fill out the form you need to provide information on verifying. Verified opt-in allows you to ensure that the person subscribing did so with his or her own email address and didn't provide a fake or malicious email. Let the visitor know that they should check their email inbox. Tell them what the subject line of the email says so they know what to look for. Convey that they must click on the link inside to verify and receive the download link to your product.

In the autoresponder they receive after verifying, give them the download link. Since they are subscribed to your list and have confirmed that the address they provided is valid you can effectively follow up providing more information about using the free or trial software, training tips, and further benefits or features earned by becoming a customer.

Using these techniques you are sure to increase your sales when converting free downloads to paid customers.
Sean Cohen, Director of Client Relations & Development of Newtown, PA based AWeber Communications, Inc. an opt-in email service provider. With 7 years managing opt-in autoresponders, automated follow up and newsletters for small businesses.

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My own twist on this technique is to build a list so you can tell people about your new downloads. This way you can get a following of people that don't so easily forget where they got their free stuff from and spread the word about your site. Also, please note that this topic is posted to the monetization thread so it does not relate to the charitable sites that give away things for their own reasons which are better discussed in other boards.