How many people are clicking your download links?
If only a few, you might want to offer something different. If many, you might want to expand your offerings.
When you know, you can made informed decisions. When you don't know, well, you just don't know.
If your Internet presence is intended to be an income producing enterprise, you need to know in order to make more profitable decisions and less costly ones.
This article presents several ways to measure downloads, in detail, and suggests additional methods. These methods work for any files that can be downloaded by linking directly to the file. Examples are ZIP files and ebooks with PDF and EXE file name extensions.
Measurements can be by receiving an email whenever a file is downloaded and/or by recording each individual download in a database.
We measure downloads of the Master Series CGI scripts using ProLinkz from http://willmaster.com/a/27t/pl.pl?pl
With ProLinkz, assign the download URL as the destination URL (done in the control panel). Then replace the download link in your web pages (or ezines or wherever) with the ProLinkz link.
When a ProLinkz link is clicked, or typed into a browser, it records the click and then sends the browser to the destination URL, at which point the download commences.
ProLinkz graphs the number of clicks by day, month, hour, and even by minute. We no longer have to guess, or scan the server logs, to determine which titles are the most popular.
That's one of the database methods. Another is presented later in this article.
If you prefer to receive an email instead, many scripts that send email can be utilized. Simply change the "thank you" page URL to the URL of your regular download link.
The form is filled out, the submit button clicked, the script sends the email, and the download commences.
Let's use Master Feedback from http://willmaster.com/a/27t/pl.pl?msmf as an example.
The name and email fields are required fields. If you don't want to ask for that information in exchange for the download, those two fields can be made into hidden fields containing junk information. (The email address especially should be junk, like name@example.com, because of the ever-present likelihood that spammers' harvesting robots will come a-feeding.)
Should you use Master Feedback to measure more than one download, use a hidden field something like
<input type="hidden" name="x-which" value="thefile.zip">
and replace "thefile.zip" with either the file name, the download name, or some other reference that allows you to determine which file was downloaded.
If you prefer a regular link instead of a submit button, the "Form Submissions Without Submit Buttons" article at http://willmaster.com/a/27t/pl.pl?270par can show you how.
Maybe you prefer both a database update and an email?
Master Form V3 from http://willmaster.com/a/27t/pl.pl?mfv3 can help you with that.
With Master Form V3:
When using Master Form V3 in this way, use the hidden field name="redirect" instead of name="flowto" to specify the "thank you" page download URL. The first redirects the browser. The latter is a command to customize the file for display in the browser — which you do not want.
A note about "thank you" pages: When the form redirects the browser to the thank you page, the download commences because the thank you page URL is actually the download link.
As an alternative, the user could be redirected to a web page with a META-REFRESH tag. The URL in the tag would be the URL to the download file. With this method, you could have a message for the downloader on the web page, for reading while s/he is waiting for the download to finish.
Will Bontrager
Provided by
WillMaster Possibilities