With lots of Gift Codes going out with the Better World book Kickstarter, and likely even more in the future, I was wondering if thought had been given to providing a way for recipients of those codes to painlessly redeem them for a quick, obligation-free, one-off download/view — instead of having to create a permies.com account in order to redeem them?

I think making it as easy as possible for "borderline-interested" people to access content would help lower the barrier-to-entry and infect more brains.

I'm thinking that the link to redeem the gift code could land the recipient at a page that asks if they would like to either: a) Have the item permanently added to their permies.com account for unlimited future access, or b) Have the item downloaded/displayed anonymously once and once only — with no need to create or have an account.

If they choose option b) they should then be advised that after the download/view is complete, should they wish to download/view the item again, they can do so by creating a permies.com account and then going to [some page] and entering the code in the appropriate place (I couldn't actually find such a place, to be honest) or clicking the link a second time.

Of course, instead of a single download/view, option b) could open up a 24-hour window in which they could download/view the item as many times as they want, or some other arrangement that has advantages.

The reality is that a non-trivial fraction of borderline-interested folks won't bother creating an account just to access a single item... which would be a waste of a gift code.

Im not on the staff here, but it takes less than a minute to make an account and is no big deal. It would be a shame if anybody thought that the gift codes werent worth that minute to make an account. But even to me it doesnt sound like the backend work of making that happen is worthwhile.

People are always welcome to create an email just for this if they dont want to use their normal one.