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One great way to drive traffic is to offer printables on your blog for free download. This provides a free product that doesn’t cost you much other than time, but provides a great product for your readers.

These steps will show you how to upload these files and offer them in an easy and aesthetic way, both on self-hosted Wordpress and Blogger.

How to offer printables on your Wordpress blog: 

PDF Files

Step 1: Upload your files to your media library by clicking “add media” as you would for any photo. For this step, upload both the printable file, and a web image that represents it.

Step 2: Make sure your PDF is selected. In the area “attachment display settings” copy the URL that’s highlighted. Don’t change anything.

Step 3: Now select the image file that will link to your printable.

Step 4: In the “attachment display settings” switch “media file” to “custom URL”. In the box below it, paste the URL that you copied in step 2.

Step 5: If you’d like your download to open in a new window (I prefer this so that people can continue to browse my blog), Make sure the image you just inserted is selected. Click on the link icon in the text editing area, and click on the “open link in a new window/tab” option.

JPEG Files

The step by step process is much the same. However, instead of your PDF file, you’ll want a print quality jpeg file. You’ll create a web quality image, with the proper color formats for web so that your readers will be able to see an accurate preview. You’ll then link this image to the full quality, CMYK mode jpeg. If this confuses you, make sure you’ve read part 1 of this mini-series, which explains sizes, color, and file formats for printables. You can also read “What are pixels?” to learn more about these terms that I keep throwing in…

Whichever option you choose, make sure to specify that that image links to your download. You can also insert a “download now” hyperlink, obtaining your download link in the same way as mentioned above. Or, you can substitute the preview image with a “download” button. I prefer the preview image, as it’s less reminiscent of spam sites and ads.

You can see some examples of how I’ve uploaded printables here. 

How to offer printables on your Blogger blog: 

As far as I know, blogger does not have file hosting options like Wordpress does. You’ll need to use an external file sharing program. Here are some of my favorites:

Google Drive – The advantage is: almost everyone has a Google account. The disadvantage is you have only 15 GB of storage, and if you use it regularly, you probably won’t want to sacrifice too much of it. This includes your Gmail, and G+ photos…

I also find that for those that DON’T use it regularly it’s not so easy to use.

Dropbox – This is another popular one. You get very limited storage free – 2.5 GB to be exact and that’s only if you use my referral link. The advantage is that many people use this as well and are very comfortable with it. You can earn more storage by referring others, up to 16GB, so if you don’t use it otherwise it’s a great idea.

This is very easy to use as it works similarly to a regular folder structure on any computer.

Copy – This is my favorite, and my go-to choice. They offer generous free storage (15 GB, 20 if you use a referral link, and 5 extra for anyone your refer.) As far as I know, they have not capped this. The one disadvantage is that not everyone recognizes this company as they are less-known.

Copy’s usability is similar to that of Dropbox and is very user-friendly.

Once you uploaded it, you can link to it in your post by finding the file sharing options on that image or folder. You can then link to it in your blog post.  (Note: the Dropbox and Copy links above are my referral codes. If you use them to sign up, I get some extra storage.)

If you liked this, you’ll love:

• How to design a logo for your blog
• How to create a blog background using a seamlessly tiled image
• 50 places you can get free stock images
• Lots of custom social media icons for your blog
• How to make your blog easier to read by using proper typography

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