Ever think to link to a file (e.g. excel spreadsheet) for a forum, like you can for an image with imgur?
other than Dropbox public url's the services that exiist have so many images with the word "Download" in the resulting link, all of which look exactly like a UX element, that you have to click about half of them or play Sherlock Holmes to uncover the real download link. It's like a scratch-off lottery.
You could get a hosting account (e.g. NearlyFreeSpeech or S3) and hotlink to them. I guess people don't often intentionally click ads when downloading files, unlike viewing images, so setting up a free file host isn't profitable.
other than Dropbox public url's the services that exiist have so many images with the word "Download" in the resulting link, all of which look exactly like a UX element, that you have to click about half of them or play Sherlock Holmes to uncover the real download link. It's like a scratch-off lottery.