In internet marketing circles, you probably read a lot about the importance of giving away free stuff. As much as I am a fan of making everything as simple as possible there is more to it than just “give away a bunch of free stuff” and people will then like you and buy from you.
Your free stuff should always have a goal. Such as to support the selling of your products, otherwise you are just running a hobby or even a charity. Plain and simple. Many well known marketers who advocate the giving away of free stuff, seem to leave out that important part.
If you go to some well known marketers blogs, you may see some great free content, however almost all of it is made with a goal in mind.
The Biggest Mistake
If you have a product to sell, Do not just put up a bunch of free tips every day of some cool things you know and hope people will eventually buy from you. In my experience of 10 years of running internet businesses, I can tell you, it will not happen.
Therefore, there needs to be a reason you are giving away free stuff.
Here are some example of a reason for giving away free content. The Goal is listed under each reason.
1) To support the sale of your product
Some examples of this type of free content are when people give out a sample or demo of what they are selling. Such as the first chapter or introduction of an e-book.
Another example if when people create a blog post about something like “10 most asked questions about…”. If you have a blog and and have a product for sale, or are going to launch one soon, you can use the commenting feature of blogs to see the questions and concerns people have about the product. Compile your answers into a blog post and upload it to your blog. Instant content that supports the sale of your product.
How about those case studies you see so often. Those are fun to watch for many people. Actually, sometimes they bore me, but they are purely to support the sale of a product.
2) For Link Bait
There are 2 general type of visitors that can come to one of your websites. People who don’t know you and people who do know you. Link bait is for people who don’t know you. Sometimes referred to as cold traffic.
The point of this free content is to target certain searches that people are entering into search engines. These “cold traffic” people will come to your site to read your free information. However you should still use “directing” and give them a good piece of content and then direct them to an action you want them to take.
Again, the biggest mistake is just giving out a cool free something and hope people will then take the action you want them to.
3) To drive people to an affiliate product
Someone is selling a course about email marketing. You can make your own content that complements what that person is selling or give out something about email marketing that you know. At the end of your content you direct the visitor to your affiliate link. The goal, of course, is to get sale commissions on that affiliate product.
A very common piece of free content that has the affiliate commission goal is the product review.
Yes, even this piece of content has a goal to it. Believe it or not, this is not posted just because I am a nice guy writing an article to help you. I won’t tell you what the goal is right now, maybe in another post sometime.
Regards,
Ethan Semmel
