This is really a question for software developers. Perhaps something that Realmac or other developers might know.
I have created a website using Rapidweaver to sell an eBook, which is tied to various product promotions of photographic equipment across Europe and the US. One such promotion would allow buyers of equipment to make use of unique one time use codes to download a free copy of the book from my website. It’s important that it goes through my site so we can keep track of the downloads and also use a PDF stamp to limit piracy.
In discussions it was suggested the company could apply stickers to the outside of their product boxes, however this is clearly open to abuse, since anybody seeing the code could simply go to the site and download a free copy. The legitimate customer would then be unable to do so.
To me it feels like we need a solution whereby customers can register their details online and receive the unique code, rather like when somebody purchasing software receives a unique serial number that is tied to their email address. Does anybody here have a suggestion how this could be handled simply and efficiently? I need to go back with some kind of solution that makes sense. I am using FastSpring for billing that will allow me to generate random codes.
Thanks
Ashley
My Post Office stack has the ability to only display content once a user registers. You could use the to unveil a download link to the ebook.
Thanks Joe, I’ll study this up but I am not sure it can do what we need. Perhaps I didn’t explain it clearly enough.
Ideally the customer would have to put in their serial number taken from the purchased equipment or some other proof of purchase that could then be verified as correct and I suspect the manufacturer would like this on their own site. At that point we would let them have a unique one time use code (probably via email) that could be applied to the cart on my website to obtain the free download.
I know they have been running another promotion where purchasing their equipment comes with a free 1 year subscription for a software package made by another company and they were explaining that the process of checks was rather time consuming.
I am looking to make this as easy as possible and to me it sounds like we need a form linked to a small database that can simply match each product serial number to a specific download code. Once a download code is released it is crossed off the list and no longer available from them but would be accepted for a single download from my site. FastSpring will allow me to create these download codes so they would work correctly.
Thinking this through I think they need to hire somebody who can write a very simple piece of code that matches each product serial number to an individual download code stored in a database. With the correct product serial number they would then be emailed the download code.