The Art of Free
There is a counter-intuitive truth to monetizing websites and online businesses: the more you give away for free, the more money you tend to make. Sounds crazy, but it has proven to be true time and time again. The reason is that through giving away your knowledge and possibly even products for free, you build customer trust and loyalty and you solidify your brand. Since your readers and fans don’t have to worry about you overselling to them or taking advantage of them, they come back time and again, giving you their trust and their attention. So that when you finally ARE ready to pitch something, they are also ready to listen and give it some serious consideration. Here is a short list of some things you can offer for free in your business to build an audience that you can then carefully sell to:
Blog Posts
Of course, this is a no-brainer in the free department. Who doesn’t give away their blog posts for free? But how much thought have you given to what goes into your typical blog post? Are you posting regularly just to post? Or are you consistently offering content that would be valuable enough to charge for? You definitely want to shoot for the latter in your daily blogging. Strive regularly to write the highest quality content you are capable of, and have the goal of making your readers marvel at just how much turn-key information you give away for free on a daily basis.
Parts of Ebooks
Do you have an ebook on the market or in the works? One great way to sell ebooks is to make a certain number of chapters available for free. This will help your potential customers see just how valuable the information in the ebook really is, and they will be more likely to buy. And don’t just save all the truly valuable information for the paid chapters. Remember, you want them to see that it is worth buying, so make sure there are at least a few gems in the free chapters, and help them see what they’ll be gaining by buying and reading the whole book.
Physical Objects
If you are able, give away some physical object that really defines your business and what you are trying to do. Not everyone will be up for the expense of this, but if you are able to afford to ship something simple or if you have a large local audience, everyone loves free stuff, and you might be surprised at how instantly you’ve created a fan just by your willingness to send them a cool sticker or key chain or real-life sample of your product line.
