How to give away free stuff
November 17, 2009 by ethan
First off, let me clarify. I am talking about people who have a product to sell as the main way to monetize your site.
If your main way to monetize your website is by advertising than you will have a different goal for your free content.
Ok, clarification done…
I’ve run into so many people who say you have to give away a bunch of free content to get people to like you before they will buy from you.
Well, yes and no. And if you look with your own eyes, you will see this is not what many of the people who sell to the “make money online” market do.
First and foremost.
Your free stuff should support the selling of your products, otherwise you are just running a charity plain and simple.
Let me go through some examples I’ve seen in my internet travels
And, I am not talking about a launch blog that is made only for the purpose of building anticipation for the launch of a product.
Frank Kern – when he makes a blog post, just about all of the time he is either try to build anticipation to sell one of his products, or he is sending the visitor to an affiliate offer.
He DOES NOT just post a bunch of free “how to” info every few days on his blog for the hell of it. It is entertaining, and useful, but it’s done with a purpose in mind. Not just to be a nice guy.
Marlon Sanders – uses a pop in opt-in page and a salesletter to sell his products. He goes for the sale right away with a compelling sales message.
His autoresponder emails followup with his prospects with salespitches and some content.
Do Not just put up a bunch of free tips that are unrelated to each other hoping people will buy. There needs to be a reason for the content.
I have nothing to sell you right now so my free content is not in support of my newest product. You can be sure when I do have a product to sell you, I will giving free content that will aid in the sale of that product.
So the goal of my free content right now is to get you to like what you read and then choose to sign up to my mailing list by leaving your email in that box on the right hand side of the blog.
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All your free content (or at least most) should lead the visitor toward the sale sales of some product.
So it really is not about “give away free content” it is give away free content that has an ultimate goal.
Some of these goals may be…
To sell a product immediately
To warm a prospect up for a product you will try to sell them in a few days
To get them to fill out a survey
To get them to click to an affiliate offer.
But free content with no goal in mind produces no moolah. Essentially it just becomes a hobby
conventional and boring is good
November 17, 2009 by ethan
Remember, doing things in the conventional and standard way is good.
Don’t try to “be different”.
Always remember, people spend most time on other sites, not yours.
They get used to how most websites do things. This is good. It gets users used to a “certain way”
For example, most blogs seem to have…
content on the left side
ads on the right sidebar
banner ads on top
links on the right side
A row of navigation buttons on top
This is the standard and it is what I expect to see when at a blog.
Think about when you go grocery shopping.
There are aisles, and you checkout in the front of the store, nearest the doors. Why is every grocery store setup like this? To make it as easy as possible for the shopper.
And this is what you should try to do with your websites and blogs as well.
Being different is confusing. Being conventional helps your visitor more.
And that’s the point.
