Dropbox Deviance:Guide to Using Dropbox for File Freedom!

Introduction:

Dropbox has only been around for about half of a decade, but in Startup years

that's somewhat more substantial. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of

Dropbox users soared from only 5 million to a mind-boggling 25 million.

I think it's safe to say that they are here to stay, folks. In fact, all those users are

now saving upwards of 300 million files per day, or 1 million every five minutes.

So what is Dropbox, you might be wondering? If you're not already familiar, it's

a file storage service that is cloud based and (best of all) free to use.

But before we get into this any deeper, I should take a moment to explain WHY

Dropbox is so exciting, for those who don't immediately see the potential.

To do this, I'm going to tell a short story about a now discontinued service that I

discovered before I became a Dropbox user. It was called Google Page Creator,

and some of you might have heard of it back when it was still around.

It was basically a tool for non-technical people to create webpages and publish

them online. I think it was released sometime around 2007, though I could be

wrong. I know it was discontinued in 2009, for whatever it's worth.

Okay, the truth is that Google Page Creator was nothing special. The pages you

could make with its editor were not very exciting or advanced. There were

limited templates and generally the sites looked like crap, in my opinion.

But there was something ELSE about the service that was incredibly cool and

insanely useful. And use it I did, all the time. So what about it was so freakin'

neat?

Well, when you uploaded images to include in your web pages, it would host

them for you from within your Google Page Creator account. It would

automatically populate a list of all the images you had uploaded, which could be

viewed from the dashboard after logging in to your account.

It was basically just a list of file names, just like the images were on your hard

drive. When you clicked on one, it would open the image in a browser. Meaning,

each image had it's own unique URL or web address.

This made Page Creator unique from most file hosting services (free ones, at

least) since those typically only hosted the file for the purpose of someone else

being able to download it from their site. I'm sure that one of the big reasons

they worked this way was because their server couldn't handle tons of people

hotlinking the image from their web host, which was a very real possibility.

Well, this whole thing might not sound very cool yet. But I discovered something

else about this list of images I had uploaded. There was an upload button right

there, which allowed me to add more...BUT...it wasn't just images that could be

uploaded directly from this interface. You could upload ANY type of file and

Google Page Creator would give it a unique URL and host it for you.

I'm talking anything. Even .EXE programs, which Gmail won't allow you to send

as attachments. PDFs, HTML files, anything you could think of.

As far as I know, there wasn't any way to upload other types of files from within

the Google Page Creator editor that was used for publishing web pages. But from

the main interface, you could upload any fucking thing you wanted.

Naturally, the service was free and had storage limits. But the allotment per

account was rather generous and since I had almost ten different Gmail

addresses, I simply started using those when I eventually filled up the storage

space in my first account.

This was cool for so many different reasons. I used it in tons of ways. I uploaded

programs that I wanted to be able to download on computers in the future and

didn't want to have to track down again. I had all sorts of fun with it.

Until Google decided to retire it, much to my dismay. Oh well. My run was

over...

So fast forward a few years and I finally figured out that Dropbox could be used

in much the same way. That's what this report is all about. I'm going to show you

some very creative and useful ways in which you can use a free Dropbox account

to accomplish all manner of badassery. So let's begin then...

Dropbox Deviation #1: Hosting Download Files

If you want to create your own info products and sell them online using Paypal,

then you can use Dropbox to host your product files. While this may not be the

most secure means by any stretch, it does work and is a great option for

someone who doesn't yet have their own website.

So let's dive right in. Once you've logged into your Dropbox account online, you

will see a couple default folders listed. I believe one is for Photos and the other is

titled Public. This is the folder we will be using for all of the tips in this guide.

Anything you upload to your public Dropbox folder will be viewable by anyone

online who has the link to your file or files. This means you can get free hosting

for your digital products.

To do this, simply create a new folder within the public folder and give it your

product name or whatever title you want. Next, upload the zip file containing

your product inside that folder. Last step is just copying the link location for the

zip file, and you are ready to paste it anywhere online or in emails to your

buyers.

In fact, when I first started selling products on the Warrior Forum, I simply

setup a Paypal button for the product and used the link I copied for the ZIP

folder in Dropbox as the redirect URL following a purchase. This automatically

triggers the download upon successful payment for one of your products.

Granted, people were not really used to this approach and some were a bit

confused as to how they could access the product files. I simply helped these

people out on an individual basis, but you sould take it into consideration or

perhaps include some text on your sales page explaining how the process works.

Dropbox Deviation #2: Host Web Pages

Dropbox is especially useful if you don't have your own website yet but would

like to start selling info products immediately. The reason for this is that you can

download a simple HTML template for a squeeze or sales page, make a few

minor edits and then upload it to Dropbox for free hosting.

Now you can simply copy the link to the file in Dropbox and use it as your sales

page URL anywhere you need to direct traffic to your offer. For example, I have

used sales pages hosted on Dropbox on both my Squidoo lenses and for my

product delivery in JVZoo as well. See the screenshots below for more help.

Step #1: Login to Dropbox and Open the Public Folder

Step #2: Click on the New Folder Icon

Step #3: Click on Your New Folder

Step #4: Click on the Upload Icon to Add Your Files

Step #5: Right Click on File and Choose Copy Link Location

Step #6: Copy Link to Clipboard

Dropbox Deviation #3: Sharing Entire Folders

Dropbox Deviation #5: Automate Tasks With Ifttt