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How To Create A Download Link On Your Website

Posted by MatthewNeer on Jan 21, 2010 | View Comments

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One of the best and easiest ways to monetize your website or blog is to add a downloadable ebook that your readers can enjoy. You can either charge for this ebook or simply link to a few affiliate products as recommend resources within the contents of the ebook. Both are incredible ways to build your list, generate some additional income, and brand yourself as an expert in your niche.

But the hardest problem is not getting the ebook written, that is the easy part. The hardest part is figuring out how you are going get your ebook on your readers hard drive. There are a few different ways to do this like as an email attachment, or a redirect email link, but today we are going to cover the most popular and secure way which is offering a thank you page on your blog with a download link on it.

In order for your site to allows others to download a product you must first create a download link. I think you’ll be happy to know it’s coded the exact same way as a regular hyperlink. Lets take a look.

HTML Code For Download Link

For the examples we will use an ebook from my friends over at GoldCoastWebDesigns.com

Source

<a href="http://www.goldcoastwebdesigns.com/dl/aff-masters.zip" target="_blank">Download Link</a>

Result

Download Link

You should notice that the link is coded to open in a new window. This is because if you do not do this the download link can get lost on some rare occasions. To prevent this, simply use the target=”_blank” tag.

The only downside to using this method is that sometimes popup blocking software can catch this and not let your visitor download the file. So to prevent that from happening it might be a good idea to instruct them to turn off popup blocking before they try to download.

Another important thing to note is that you will want to instruct your visitor to right click and “save target as” for them to download the file to their hard drive. Sometimes people aren’t as tech savvy as we would like and they don’t know how to save a file.

The PDF Download Link

Source

<a href="http://www.goldcoastwebdesigns.com/dl/aff-masters.pdf">Download Link</a>

Output

Download Link

Note: Clicking a PDF download link will cause the file to open up within the browser. Many people do not know that they can save a PDF in their browser to their hard drive. It is important to instruct them to right click and “save target as”

Relative Links

Source

<a href="dl/aff-masters.pdf">Download Link</a>

Output

Download Link

You should notice that the link about is relative to two things in the url.

• The location of where the file is being downloaded from.
• The location of the download link.

The HTML Button Download

Source

<form><input type="button" value="Download Now" onClick="window.location.href='/dl/aff-masters.exe'"></form>

Output

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my eBook Article Cannon

If you haven't got it yet, you may want to download this private interview with Frank Kern. Thanks for visiting!

Bill Cowan

Once again I keep finding great tools and instruction. Thanks Matthew.
beverlymonical

My business partner and I are creating a book right now and this is such valuable information for us. Thanks Matthew!
scottphares

OK, you've been Dugg, buddy!
MatthewNeer

Thanks again Scott, make sure you let me know when you have any new posts out there or cool stuff you want syndicated and if it's top quality, I'll blast it out for you!
scottphares

Hey Matthew, thanks! This is great stuff for everyone to know. I have used the CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD links on numerous sites in the past, I appreciate the elaboration, especially the button, didn't know about that one.
MatthewNeer

Thanks for the comment Scott, glad I could help you out. I just implemented the download button for my ebook. It's a really cool feature that helps people do what you want them to do with a big fat button! lol If you have a chance, please Digg this post for me.