First, SignUp a free 2GB account : HERE
When you signup for Dropbox, you get 2GB of free space to start storing and sharing. I quickly came to find that the files we were collaborating on had used up all my free space. As a result, I had to delete or stop sharing other folders to make it all fit. After finishing the project, I vowed to never run out of space again.
When you signup for Dropbox, you get 2GB of free space to start storing and sharing. I quickly came to find that the files we were collaborating on had used up all my free space. As a result, I had to delete or stop sharing other folders to make it all fit. After finishing the project, I vowed to never run out of space again.
Now a reasonable person would just pay to upgrade to one of Dropbox's affordable storage plans, but I fell somewhere between the 4GB I had and the 50GB I could purchase. I have a 16GB flash drive I use, so I wanted a size similar to that. After a lot of online research, I found many articles revealing a slew of ways to get more space for free, all thanks to Dropbox's generous system of rewards, referrals and beta testing opportunities.
After trying to explain the steps over and over to friends, I decided to write the following guide to hopefully benefit you (by giving you more space online for important files) and benefit Dropbox (by attracting more users to their service). For all you mathematicians at home, you may notice by the end that the total space is around 22GB. Some of the steps I used have reduced their rewards from when I started, but even if you don't get 25GB exactly, these steps should get you most of the way there.
Let's begin:
1. Sign up for Dropbox using a referral link. When you sign up using someone's referral link you both get an extra 500MB of space for free.
2. Complete the Getting Started Page to earn another .25GB of free space. (2.75GB free so far)
3. Do the steps on DropBox Free page to earn another 640MB. (3.625GB free so far)
If you've made it this far, you may have noticed things have been fairly easy. You may also have notice you haven't gotten much more space then when you started. Here comes the challenging part that can earn you some serious free space:
4. Go to the Dropbox Experimental Forum Build Page, read the directions and download the Dropbox for Mac (or PC) Beta. The idea is that after installing the software, you can plug in your camera and follow the onscreen directions to upload camera photos and video to Dropbox. Whatever amount you uploaded will get you that amount of Dropbox storage (up to 3GB) for free. Of note, this offer used to be for 5GB of free space. They constantly revise the versions and the giveaway, so you may want to act sooner than later to take advantage of this opportunity. (Up to 6.625GB so far)
The final step is the hardest, but you can get up to an additional 16GB of free space. You may recall in step one that I said when you sign up to using a referral link, both parties get 500MB of space for free, up to 16GB. Granted, that's if you can get 32 people to sign up. If you're surrounded by tech-savy friends that already use Dropbox (or are like me don't like asking your friends and family for anything) this next step may be for you:
5. Read this Lifehacker article for directions (and photos) on how to setup a Google AdWords ad to get Dropbox referrals. I added several suggestions below based on my own experience that made the process shorter and more effective. For starters, I signed up for Google AdWords with this link instead to get a $100 credit and avoid the Lifehacker's link that assumes you are a small business owner and asks you to locate your business on a map.
The gist of the article is that after you signup for the free Google AdWords credit, you create an ad to be shown online that uses your referral link. When people use it to sign up and install the Dropbox software (like you may have when you clicked on the referral link above) you get more free space. Make sure you have your special referral link handy when making the ad. You find it by logging into Dropbox, clicking "Get More Free Space" (it's the short link at the bottom of the page). Follow the Lifehacker instructions to apply your free credit and set up your account.
One thing Lifehacker says that's not required is that you need to enter your credit card number (to which the article assures that you won't be charged). Google will ask you if you want to add a credit card to keep paying for the ad once it runs out, but you can (and should) skip this step to avoid the chance of paying big bucks to keep the ad going long after you max out on your referral credits. This should be fairly obvious when signing up, but the last thing I want is for people to get charged when the point of the article is about getting things for free.
After adding the AdWords credit and setting up your account, you'll need to create the ad. This is again where my advice and Lifehacker's differ. When I created a new campaign, I only chose United Stated and Canada to show my ad. My only search term was Dropbox. Why? Because every time someone clicks on a link, it deducts from your credit, whether or not that person ever signs up and installs the software. So if someone clicks by accident or doesn't understand why they've clicked on your ad, they most like will never complete the process.
I stuck with North America assuming that more people would be more likely read my english-language ad, have heard of Dropbox and hopefully be seeking it out to sign up. Also, I had the ad only appear on computers and laptops, assuming that people would be less likely to install the software while on the go, which is required to get the space.
The Lifehacker article for tips on how to write your ads and to see when you get referrals. But my last tip is to setup only one ad. I used Lifehacker's most successful ad, divided into four lines:
Free Online Storage Space
2.5GB Free Online Storage
Access Your Documents Anywhere!
dropbox.com
(Don't forget to put your special referral link as the ad's link. Otherwise, you won't get any additional space.)
It took 6 days and nearly the entire credit for me to max out referrals using the Lifehacker article. With my changes, I was able to help a friend max out their referrals in two days using only half the credit. I know it may look like I'm asking you to game Google AdWords, but considering you're using a free credit to try out their service, I feel like the spirit of Google's offer is remains intact. Personally, I had never used AdWords before getting referrals to Dropbox, I now understand how it works and have plans to use it to promote my book when I've finished writing it.
If you follow all these steps you could end up with a total of 22.625GB of free space. Dropbox also has giveaways and other opportunities randomly, so watch their blog for crazy announcements, like last year's DropQuest scavenger hunt. Some of the directions can be tricky, so if you're not sure how to make it to the end, I'd suggest passing on those steps and waiting for another opportunity to come around from Dropbox.
