A content locker is a software or script (or for our purposes, a WordPress plugin) which you can use to lock up your content and keep it from your website’s visitor until that visitor takes your desired course of action which will effectively unlock that content. But what is the best content locker?
Best Content Locker
Examples of content which you could lock up using a content locker would be text on a post or page (ie “to read the rest of this post…”), an image or video, or even a download.
Examples of your desired course of action would be signing up for your mailing list or for my purposes, giving my website social proof in the form of Facebook “Likes”, Google “Pluses”, or Twitter “Tweets”/”Follows”.
It helps to have some kind of powerful and convincing incentive to offer your site’s visitors if you are intent on them taking your desired course of action, in my case it’s my free 95 page eBook on making money, marketing, and copywriting online which is filled with tips and information for newbies and experienced marketers alike. Many people who have read the eBook have told me I could charge for it, so I feel just fine in asking people to pay with some social proof.
But what is the best content locker out there? I did a bit of research in finding this out for myself so I thought I’d share my findings here. Note that there are a lot of plugins which focus on paying via a Tweet or paying via a “Like”, but I’m only interested in the ones which tackle all of them.
Like to Keep Reading
“Like to Keep Reading” makes hiding content easy. You just highlight the text you want to lock up in your post or page section and on your “kitchen sink” control panel in WordPress you simply click the thumbs up icon and that will lock up that content until someone likes it. With this plugin you don’t have the option of locking up a download link specifically, so you would just add your download link to your text like you would any other link and make sure that’s part of or the entirety of the locked up content.
Additionally, you can point your “likes” to whatever URL you like whether that’s the page you’re on, your Facebook fan page, your site’s home page, etc.
This plugin also affords you the option of adding Twitter and Google Plus buttons with your Facebook like button but it should be understood that you CANNOT use these other social network buttons to lock up/unlock your content, they’re just bonus advertising you’ll hope someone clicks on and which don’t have any real power like the Facebook button wields.
WPLike2Get
“WPLike2Get” offers some extra functionality which “Like to Keep Reading” does not. For instance, you can specify a file to be locked up and the download link will only be made available after someone gives you your social proof. Notice I didn’t specifically say “after someone clicks the like button”. This is because WPLike2Get gives you the option of choosing which buttons you want to include and any of them will unlock the content. 
It’s also easy to choose which social network you want proof for. If you want Tweets, turn on the Twitter support, you want Google Pluses, turn on the G + support. Unfortunately any click of one of these buttons will yield the download link, so including more than one runs the risk that you won’t get your priority social network and consequently you should only reveal the ones which you want clicks for. Just like with “Like to Keep Reading”, you can hide textual content, as well, until someone gives you the social network love you need.
One major drawback is that you cannot point your likes toward just any page like you can with the “Like to Keep Reading”.
WP Viral Outbreak
This is the “premium” plugin to round out the list. It costs roughly $20 for the full license which includes instant download capability, meaning that as soon as someone clicks on the social network button of choice their download will start.
You can use this to both hide content and lock up downloads which is nice, you can choose buttons for all 3 social networks to show, plus you can choose a target Facebook URL to send likes to a custom Facebook URL just as you do with WPLike2Get.
Ultimately it’s all about your preference because all 3 have their advantages and drawbacks and not one has every option I’m looking for which is really to be able to choose which page receives the “like” and require someone to click multiple buttons before claiming their download (to name a couple of things which).
Check out the solution I rigged up for this site in particular in video form in my post on how to boost your social influence with incentives.