In this week's episode of the Above The Fold Podcast, we look at a few of the long-term benefits of giving away your best, premium eBook for free! Let's dive in!
Hey guys, Fabrizio Van Marciano here from Magnet4Blogging.net. I hope you’re doing well in these strange current times. Welcome to Episode Six of the above the fold podcast show for bloggers, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs too.
In this episode, I’ll be talking a little about giving away your best, premium eBook for free. So what I’m saying is that instead of selling your eBook and making a profit, you should consider giving it away for nothing other than an email address, because it could potentially be a lot more profitable for you and your blogging business later down the line, so let’s dive straight in.
(Music)
Hey, what is up guys, thanks for joining me on another podcast episode here on Above The Fold.
Before we dive into this week’s show, I just want to mention real quick that I recently decided to invest some time and a little bit of money in re-launching this podcast.
I started the Above The Fold podcast way back in 2015 but I’ve only managed five episodes. Well, six episodes including this one to date. So, yeah, I’ve been looking for an alternative way to create content for my blog over at Magent4Blogging, and I just thought podcasting would be the perfect fit.
So, you’ll be seeing, or should I say hearing a lot more shows in the future as opposed to reading blog posts.
I’m pretty excited about it. It’s the most excited I’ve been about this podcast for a long while. I've been sort of coming and going with it really. But I have also been very focused on creating content for my YouTube channel, which has been growing steadily, but I’m definitely going to find more time to create more podcast shows here for you guys.
OK, so giving away your best eBook for zero money so that you can absolutely make zero profits. Does that sound like a smart strategy? Well, it actually could be and so let me explain a little bit.
It’s kind of tempting to want to sell your best digital premium product, in this case, let’s use your eBook as example.
I’ve been thinking about my own eBook - The Ultimate Social Media Planner Workbook that I sell over on my blog. I only just recently launched this eBook so I’ve not had a huge number of sales from it.
I have another similar eBook called The Ultimate Pro Blog Planner which I’ve sold just over 100 copies of and made just over $1,000 since it’s launch over 12 months ago.
Not a huge success, by any means, I know that. But with selling eBooks and depending on where you sell them and how much marketing and promotional work you put in, you can take a lot of the profit even though it isn’t that much.
But here’s the thing:
I’m considering just giving away my social media planner, and maybe even my blog planner for free as from next year (2021). Instead of selling them, that is.
I’ve been thinking -
Why not just use these two reasonably good quality digital products that I have to help me capture more leads, as in growing my email list faster?
What got me into this thought process originally, actually, was a comment that I read on one of my videos over on my YouTube channel - A subscriber asked me -
What is the benefit of giving away your eBook for free and where does the profit come from?
You know? You put all this hard work to create a premium-quality eBook and you just give it away for free! Well, you don’t have to actually give it away for free at all. But, there’s a long-term benefit.
Let me explain what that is:
You gotta think long term. I use a free eBook as a lead magnet to get people onto my email list, which is the normal thing to do. It’s not a new strategy, every other blogger is doing it, right?
The benefit is that I’m (using this free incentive) for growing my email list - which in itself is pretty important - and also which I can later on use to promote other highly relevant premium products, offers, and services.
But here's the critical bit that most bloggers miss altogether:
The key is not to just create and fob off any old mediocre 12-page PDF pamphlet for free. Because absolutely anyone can do that. You still have to ensure you're giving away an incentive that people can get incredible value from.
It doesn’t have to contain 200 pages or a glamorous cover, but it does have to be valuable and it has to provide a solution to a problem if that makes sense
Essentially, the more valuable the better.
And here’s the big reason why:
When you are willing to provide such high value for free, people will learn to trust you more.
They come to your blog, read your content, they signup, and get your eBook and get great value from it. They then learn to trust you.
And when they trust you they’ll be more than able, willing, and ready to hand over their money and pay for your premium, premium content, products, and services later on. OK?
So, you have to think long-term rather than the small profit you’ll make if you sell your eBook straight up.
That said, you don't want to be known as the person or the blogger who always gives things away for free either. Otherwise, that will be what people will always expect from you. You have to stop somewhere and say OK, so this premium stuff was for free, now this is other premium, premium stuff comes at a price.
Like Gary Vaynerchuk writes in his book "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook". You give, give, give, then take something back, right?
But then you have the incredible challenge of making your premium, premium digital product, whether that’s another eBook or an online course, or something else entirelym far better that your free premium stuff.
OK, so that’s it from, just something to think about if you're looking to sell your best premium eBook or digital product.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please consider subscribing to future episodes where ever you’re tuning in.
The podcast is available on iTunes, Google Podcasts, and TuneIn. If you’re feeling up to it, you can also leave me a quick review on iTunes. I do appreciate it and I appreciate you too.
If you want to get more tips on blogging, WordPress, online business, digital marketing, SEO, head over to my blog at magnet4blogging.net. Speak to you soon, take care.
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