You might have seen on my blog I give away a free ebook. A few people have asked me lately why I continue to give away free information when I could be selling it.
The fact is without free information nobody would know me to buy paid information.
We have to separate out the ideas of free content versus paid content and instead think of our free content as sampling for the paid stuff. Give people a taste to get them juiced up for the full thing. Also remember that your free blog articles allow you to cast out a wide search engine net to trawl back juicy new visitors.
When you give something of value away you do run the risk of being taken advantage of, of devaluing yourself, etc, but they key thing to know is you are taking the risk out of the exchange in the hope the prospect will be impressed and delighted enough to take the next step.
The secret is to not give everything away, hold something back. Give away the concepts but retain the step by step process. Give the sizzle but keep back the sausage 🙂
6 thoughts on “Make Money from Free Content”
Yeah, but if you let that stop you, then no blogger is going to make money, aside from hoping they’ll get AdSense clicks. Anyway, only someone who expects life to be handed to them for free thinks like that.
The trick is to give loads of extra value in the paid content. Otherwise, who is going to care? (There are lots of people who value paid content. This has been debated over and over.)
However, if you write something and then write a paid ebook about the same subject, it seems like you’re holding back for the paid content. Just thought I’d put that out there
True, and it’s finding the trigger point – accidental or not – that could determine the financial success of your blogging.
Yeah I think you’re right now that I think of it, Raj. Readers of blogs seem to expect everything to be free and for there to be little advertising on your blog, like you owe them something… LOL…
Still, the psychological trigger has to come into play even with blog readers at some level, because that’s just the way the mind works… I think…
Chris: Very nice advice.
Jason: The sad thing is that many people seem not to reciprocate in general. Not unless forced or coaxed into doing so.
Besides, have you heard of Dr. Robert Cialdini?
He’s a professor who researches social psychology.
He has a theory of reciprocation. Whenever you give something, whoever receives feels like they owe you something in return, and they’ll buy something from you or reciprocate in some way.
Somalia gave funds to the victims of a huge earth quake just because around 4 decades before Mexico helped Somalia. And you know Somalia doesn’t even have to money for nets for their feet…
See ya,
Jason
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