Content Leechers

What do you do when you notice members signing up just to download resources you offer? Graphics, for example...

You provide them free of charge, open source, etc. but doesn't it tick you off when they register *just* to download this stuff? What do you do about it?

 

To a certain extent that's to be expected when you offer something free. I would try various ways to lure them back to post; maybe a readme.txt file in the download promising more free graphics to people with x number of posts?

 

What are your thoughts on limiting the download access to users who have made a few posts first? E.g., "You must make x posts on the forum before you can access the downloads" or something?

 

The only issue I'd see with doing that is that a lot of people will post really crummy posts just to get access. Either you'd have to be strict about which posts you'd count, or you could offer a minimal fee (say, $5) for access to the good stuff. (But then, it wouldn't exactly be free, would it?)

 

You could limit downloads to premium members only. So it's kind of free after you've paid for your initial subscription, I suppose.

 

Offer a few quality downloads (keyword, quality) for free, because they will want to continue if they know that you care about non-premium members. Then, just throw a message in a readme or even on the description page itself, that they can get a lot more of those quality products for a small fee (for example, that membership listed above).