Right now I am reading a book by Chris Anderson called “Free – The Future of A Radical Price”. You can find this on iTunes for FREE. You can also search Google and find it pretty quick. Chris Anderson is Wired magazine’s editor in chief and gives us a glimpse of why the cost of doing business online is falling closer and closer to zero. I really like how this has helped me with everything I am doing online. The best way to get people online is to give them something free. You see this on all the top blogs you read, top sites you visit and pretty much everywhere online.
In Free, Anderson breaks down the priceless economy into six broad categories, demonstrating how to make money in each:
- “Freemium”: Free Web software and services, and some content, to users of the basic version. (Think Flickr and the $25-a-year Flickr Pro.)
- Advertising: Free content, services, and software to an audience that advertisers will pay to reach.
- Cross-subsidies: Give away any product that entices customers to pay for something else. Example: It’s a free second-gen Wii! But only if you buy the deluxe version of Rock Band.
- Zero marginal cost: Anything that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone, like online music.
- Labor exchange: Performing tasks to gain access to “free” sites and services.
- Gift economy: From Freecycle (free secondhand goods) to Wikipedia, money isn’t the only motivator.
Always give Away Something FREE
Your readers want to know that you care about them, so why not give them something free. Not only does this show your reader that you’re giving them something free that has taken you a lot of time and effort, you also show them that you care about them. This will inspire trust. This will give you more credibility. This will break down the barrier that is between you and their information to re-market to them.
How Does Free Work?
Free breaks down the barrier between you and your readers. If you are selling an eBook and you charge even $.01 you may get a small percentage of readers to purchase your product. But if you give it away for free you will quickly see that your numbers will increase, you’ll get more subscribers, and your blog will be more popular. People love something free, they don’t even think about it. It makes it so they don’t have to think about the decision; it’s free, why not?
What Do I Give Away For Free?
Give away anything and everything. Just kidding, don’t get yourself into trouble. I would personally go with what Zac Johnson, John Chow, and many others have done in the blogging space and give away an eBook. An eBook is a great way to gain your readers trust while getting them to subscribe to your blog. Use a service like aWeber to keep track and distribute your eBook. It will keep track of your readers and let you email market to them in the future. This will allow you to make money off your readers in the long run and keep them coming back to your blog consistently. Make sure when you’re giving away something free that you don’t give away crap. Giving away something free that is horrible will cause a bad taste in your readerships mouth. Bad press travels much more quickly then good press. If you put something crappy together and give it away for free it will damage your reputation.
I encourage all of you to read Chris Anderson’s book “Free – The Future of A Radical Price” It will change your world and help you to understand free a lot more than you think. It will help you realize how Google can give away 99.999% of it’s products for FREE and still make Billions Profit each year. Please let me know below if you have read the book or have any questions. I would love to help you out with and Blogging Tips that I have!
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