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Hello,
I’d like to know if anyone knows how to go about setting up promotional codes for digital downloads? I’m going to be selling records from my site and would like to include a card with the records with a link and code people can use to go to my site and get a free download of some of the songs. Ideally I’d like the link to expire after they’ve downloaded their files.
Thanks in advance for anyone’s help
Regards,
Morgen
If you want to give you free downloads for promotional purpose then the squeeze page form option is something you can use:
This is definitely a step in the right direction. However I still have a couple of questions. In addition to my customers inputting their email address and name I’d like them to have to enter a custom code/coupon code that will only be allow them to download the file two times. With the squeeze page the way it is, anyone with the url could download the files infinitely. My purpose is to include digital downloads of the songs on my record that I will be selling online. I’m going to be including small cards with each record, my goal is to have a different code for each record that the customer can use twice. Is this possible? Thanks again for your help.
– Morgen
“anyone with the url could download the files infinitely” – Not sure how you got this impression but this is not true.
First of all, the link expires after a certain time that you have specified in the settings menu. Secondly, you can specify the number of times a link can be used before it expires too (you can set it to 2 times). So nobody will be able to download the item infinitely with the encrypted link that they receive.
I think there’s a little misunderstanding here so I’ve included a link and will try to detail what the issue is. The link is http://instantrecords.com/test-product/
When you arrive to the page there is a name and email field to fill out as well as a download button. When someone enters their name and email address an encrypted link gets sent to their email inbox which is great.
My problem is that if you refresh the page or come back to the page and refill out the name and email field one can easily acquire a new encrypted link an indefinite amount of times, try it yourself to see what I mean.
Under the “manage product” I’ve set the “available copies” to “2” already however the “sales count” never seems to increase no matter how many times I’ve regenerated an encrypted link by following the example above.
As an aside, the sales count does increase if I don’t use the [wp_eStore_free_download_ajax:product_id:?:end] tag, for example under normal conditions where I’m requiring a payment for downloads.
Thank you in advance for any advice or help with this, Morgen
Yes, someone will have to generate the link each time to get a new link which will work for another 2 or so attempts before it expires. If you want to make it so once one person gets the link he can’t get it anymore then you will have to do some tweaks in the plugin that makes it so if an email address exists in the database it doesn’t give the link out anymore.
The whole point of a squeeze page is to make sure you capture the email address before you give the free product. You want to make it so the link can’t be shared on a forum or a web page where everybody can get the product without having to enter the email address. The eStore gives you the ability to protect you against this kind of abuse.
eStore is designed based on the assumption that nobody is going to sit on your web page and generate the link again and again every few hours to get a free product. If you want it to behave differently then a few lines of code will do the trick as I mentioned above.
If you request for an eStore update you will have the sales counter working properly. This link will help with that:
https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/how-and-when-do-you-get-an-update
Thank you I understand what a squeeze page does and why it does it but can you tell me how I can modify the behavior so that once a person enters their name and email address to generate an encrypted link they won’t be able to generate another link with the same name and email address? What code do I need to tweak? Where do I do this? What do I need to do exactly?
By the way I just submitted my info for the an update.
Thanks, Morgen
Not to add to the confusion but I also did the upgrade and now when I go over the amount of available copies set in the inventory control panel by filling in the name and email address to generate the encrypted link the available copies start adding in negative integers (-3, -5, etc). Meaning if I set the available amount of copies of the digital download to 2 if I keep downloading past 2 it starts going into negative integers and still allows my to download, possible bug?
The squeeze page form didn’t have inventory control as it is suppose to be giving out a free product (free digital product usually means no limited stock). I have added the stock control feature after you requested it but it was done in a hurry and I missed a check.
I have sent you an update… please give that a go.
My problem is that if you refresh the page or come back to the page and refill out the name and email field one can easily acquire a new encrypted link an indefinite amount of times, try it yourself to see what I mean.
Thank you that update fixed the inventory control bug. My last question would be, is there a way to limit the amount of free downloads to a name/email address rather than tie the limit to a product ID or name?
For example say I set my test product for 2 available copies. How I would like to set it up is for say someone enters their name/email address and clicks the download button they can generate an encrypted link, just like it works now. Because I’ve set it to “2” available copies (arbitrarily), they could theoretically do this one more time, by refreshing the page and re-entering their name/email address or revisiting the page. After they’ve done this for the second time they wouldn’t be able to do this again. They would receive the “sorry, no copies left” message, just like it works at the moment.
However, the way it’s coded now, when someone, anyone enters their name/email address two times, as set by my limiting it to 2 copies, once they’ve entered their name/email address twice the page displays “sorry, no copies left” message.
The change I would like to propose making is rather than tying the limit to the product/page tying it to the name/email address allowing other people the ability to enter their name/email address for the same free product on the same page.
Inventory control for limiting sales when you run out of stock. So if you have 50 copies of a product then you set it to 50 so the plugin will automatically stop the sale of this product when it runs out.
To limit the download link of each encrypted link to two attempts you need to specify the number in the “Download Limit Count” field (this field is in the settings menu of eStore).
As I have mentioned earlier… if you want to make it so each person can generate only one download link then the plugin code will need to be tweaked. This is something I will not add to the plugin as it is unnecessary and causes admin overhead. For example, When someone who downloaded the file once and misplaced it won’t be able to get it anymore even though it’s a free product. He will have to contact the admin for this. Imagine the overhead cost when the admin starts to get 50 of these requests everyday. When you run a site that gets thousands of traffic you need to try to minimize every unnecessary overhead you can.
With that said, if you have PHP and MySQL knowledge then let me know and I will tell you what code modifications to do to get it working your way. It’s a very very simple tweak if you know the coding.
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