Welcome Automators!

Many people have asked me about the tools we’re using for selling / distributing our AutoHotkey Automator tools.  I thought it would be smart to just write a post / do a video to discuss Easy Digital downloads.

Chances are you’ve used Easy Digital downloads when downloading free downloads for which I use the Free Downloads Extension.  This functionality is AMAZING as it gets the script into the users hands directly!  While I love this extension, there are over 150 EDD Extensions most of which are very reasonably priced and work very, very well.

EDD also has some very cool tools that we’ll be utilizing soon!  We’re working on adding a “member section” to the-Automator.  I’ll explain in greater detail of what we plan to include in the membership but the short-version is that you’ll have access to all of our Udemy courses, access to weekly meetings (and recordings of them) and discounts for any consulting work.   EDD’s content restriction extension is a very easy way to put specific pages or posts behind logins.  This way, if you’re  a member, you can easily access the content and, if you’re not, you’ll be able to see some previews, but cannot access the member pages.

Another thing I love about EDD is that, even though I’ll have an all-access membership group, I can also sell individual courses.  You may not know it but Udemy often takes between 25% – 50% of what is paid and they often sell the courses at ridiculously low prices (often I get around $1.61 for a sale).  By using the Content Restriction extension and selling the courses on the-Automator I can keep more of the $$$.  (Just an FYI- when you use a coupon from the-Automator.com/Learn , I get 97% of what is paid so please use my coupons!)

Now I’ll tell you a little secret.  The-Automator has some software that we sell (but won’t link to here as we don’t want people to know it’s AutoHotkey).  This software has both recurring licenses and lifetime licenses.  I can’t imagine trying to figure out way to manage all this with just AutoHotkey!

The last technical thing I want to mention about EDD is that they have a great API which you can connect to with a WinHTTP request from AutoHotkey.  We embed calls in our software  so it will check if the user has a valid license as well as use it to manager our newsletter subscriptions and looking at who has downloaded which tools.

Now you might be thinking “that’s great and-all, but I bet their service sucks”.   I can tell you that we’ve had spectacular support from EDD!  Often it is me reaching out trying to get something to work and they’ll point me in the right direction.  Every once in a while I’ll identify an issue on their end and they’re  very fast and professional at both fixing it and corresponding with me.

We unconditionally recommend Easy Digital downloads as a solution for selling software, handling licenses, and building lists of customers!