Create a downloads area for subscribers

Hi all,

I want to create an area on my website for visitors to be able to download different resources (PDFs). I have an educational YouTube channel, and I would like to guide people to the website to subscribe and be able to download resources around different topics and help them do their work. 

I don't think I should do this as a newsletter automation, since I want to give access to several resources, create different pages per each topic, but I'd like to get them to subscribe so I build an email list.

I don't want to do this as a shop without price, since they still need to give a credit card, which makes me lose plenty of potential subscribers. 

Any ideas on how to implement this? Thanks!

Usually a free resource is done through subscribing and then the freebie(s) are sent automatically after subscription. 

However, it sounds like you don't want to do that, but you still want the resources to be free? and you still want them to subscribe? and you want to create a new webpage per resource? This seems like more work for you and less analytics/tracking how successful your resources are, however, you can do this in 2 different ways (or a combo of both):

1. Create a password protected hidden page that maintains all of your free resources and has a when they subscribe to your email list, it automatically directs them to that page with the password in the URL. Make sure the email confirmation includes the website, with the password for the page. 

let's pretend "demo" is your password, you URL will be:

https://www.examplewebsite.com/?password=demo

2. Create a blog with a pricing plan that's set to free.

From there they would have to sign up to gain access to this private resources section of you website, they would automatically join your "members" category under contacts.  The only downside is they will not Automatically be considers and email subscriber. Which means Squarespace will not allow you to create and send them emails. 

Thanks for your reply. To be honest, I'm open to suggestions, maybe a question, if I do a subscription would this have the link to download just one free resource, or could I include several resources? I'm still a newbie in how to do these things 🙂