Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

Damn, I’ll probably catch some fire for this one.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve probably noticed that most “Gurus” are always talking about why you should “give away what you know” as a front end.

Unfortunately though, many people who follow this advice ultimately fail to make the model work. So I want to discuss the pitfalls you face when you give away free stuff to your market, and then, discuss some of the best ways I’ve used to overcome them.

Let’s get started.

Here’s some problems the “give it away free” model runs into:

1. Because you don’t give away an affiliate commission (like you do with a paid product) no one that HAS the power to promote has an incentive to promote you. Why would they do it? Because they are such great people they want to promote you for free? 9 times out of 10 this is not going to happen. And in the back of anyones mind who you’ve approached to get some exposure for your “free” front end, is the thought that once you get known, you will monetize WITHOUT THEM… and… you probably will.
2. Why would anyone bother reading something from someone they’ve never heard of? Unless you’re already a perceived authority in your market, the market itself will not receive your offer with much enthusiasm. They are already exposed to the “Give It Away Free” Business Model on a daily basis - and - as such they are quick to ignore free offers from “wannabes” who currently flood the internet with a lot of content (some good, some not) attempting to get people to click on their affiliate links. Your free offer has the impact of ONE MORE single person clapping at a football game.
3. It’s time consuming as fuck. Sorry for my French but writing a well put together, well edited 20 page ebook would cost upwards of $1000 USD if you outsourced it. And the chances are that even with a GOOD writer, it will still fall below expectations, and YOU will end up doing most of the work.
4. Free front end information can become outdated quickly depending on the market. You have to constantly go back through your give away and update it. Which sucks.

There are more problems than this, but these are the main ones that I’ve encountered over the last few years. The free business model sounds so sweet (and makes so much sense when you first hear about it)… but… as you’ve seen is riddled with potential problems.

I wouldn’t be much of a badass if I didn’t have some solutions for you though.

So here’s some things I’ve discovered that “offset” the above mentioned problems:

1. Give away software. Software is not like information - you don’t need any credibility to get people consuming it. It’s like giving away a Swiss Army Knife. People can see the value if you just describe what it does for them. Also, market leaders are somewhat likely to promote your free software as they actually DO NEED cool stuff to tell their market about - and you can provide them with some easy value.
2. Blog without monetization. In this market, this is obviously what I do. And I do it because it creates several opportunities for anyone who does it: A) It teaches whoever reads your blog to CONSUME what you write. B) It allows you to exchange links and traffic with similar other blogs. By not having monetization you dramatically increase the likelihood that people will link to you and refer to you. C) It gives you an opportunity to brand yourself - not something to worry about until you have a large readership - but not to be underestimated all the same.
3. Create video. People will consume video much more than they will consume a written PDF. Video is much more viral as well - I’ve got a ridiculous video on youtube that has gotten over 80,000 views and took me 3 minutes to make.
4. If you want to give away written content MAKE IT SHORT. You’ll notice the PDF’s I give away from this blog are usually between 1-3 pages and no more. I get email from people though who tell me that my 3 page PDF gave them more value then the $47 ebook they recently bought.

There’s more problems and solutions then the ones I’ve mentioned here, but I feel this is a very good start to a problem that many people unknowingly face.

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Hi - how are you enjoying my blog so far?

I hope you’re getting something out of it - I’ve received some very flattering email from people, but I’m not getting any comments - so feel free to leave some nice comments as well.

Incidentally, I don’t have any tracking of any kind installed on my blog, so I don’t know how many people read it: and for a very important reason that I’ll write about in a future post.

Anyway, I want to continue discussing an advanced marketing strategy that Eben Pagan called “Moving The Free Line”.

Now, moving the free line is much more difficult than most Marketers would have you believe, but I’m going to take it for granted that:

1. You already know that. And,

2. You have already successfully moved the free line.

(That’s because I’m only intersted in dicussing ADVANCED strategies for entrepreneurs who are already making good money. Business newbs are not a crowd I’m catering for.)

So you’ve moved the free line, you’re giving away lead gen content equivalent to a first sale for free, and you’re now focusing on your second sale; which is the first sale which brings you money.

This is a mistake.

If you are monetizing your second sale: you are assessing your market and your marketing INCORRECTLY.

You probably have not gone wide enough, or deep enough, into your market to really be your markets category leader.

A TRUE CATEGORY LEADER MONETIZES THE 3RD AND ALL SUBSEQUENT SALES

The second sale goes 100% to your affiliates. Without giving affiliates 100% of the first monetized sale revenue, you are not saturating potential affiliates.

It’s one of those “exponential” (but certainly not infinite) things I like to talk about.

The word of mouth and good will you generate by paying affiliates 100% of the first sale is not really measurable monetarily - because your affiliate become so loyal, you lock out any would-be future competitors, simply because your affiliates already trust YOU SO MUCH.

Additionally, monetizing the 3rd sale for yourself really FORCES you to look at markets correctly as well - if you’re not thinking in 3 product sequentials, and scalability structures, you’re not really playing the game.

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Hypothetically speaking, here’s what I would do if I owned Google and ran Adwords for profit, and had no social conscience or sense of responsibility for delivering what I said I was delivering:

1. Figure out which geographic sets of IP addresses were worth the most - as in, which group of IP addresses bought the most stuff.

2. Note those down.

3. Figure out which times of the day most people bought stuff.

4. Note those down.

5. Create an algorithm which ranked advertisers based on their CTR, combined with what they are WILLING TO SPEND (their max CPC and their max daily budget).

6. Open the flood gates of traffic to the advertisers.

7. Take my list of IP addresses and profitable times of day (my true assets, as traffic which doesn’t buy has no value) and begin to reduce the amount of traffic from that list to the point JUST BEFORE advertisers start pausing their Adwords campaigns.

8. Use the list of IP addresses and profitable times of the day to jump start new accounts - much like Eben Pagan’s Moving The Free Line.

9. Repeat steps 1-8 ad infinitum.

And the really brilliant thing is that because I would be operating in an almost totally unregulated industry none of that would be illegal!

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One of the most important things I’ve learned in business is that you can accurately predict what someone will do if you know where their biggest self interest lies. Once you know what will help them the most, you know what they’re aiming for, and thus have a tactical advantage selling, negotiating, or anything else with them.

(BII’s are not included in this phenomenon.)

And this kind of “always act 100% in your own self interest” behavior is not always a good thing.

Take Google for example.

Before Adsense existed, it didn’t really have any reason to act in it’s own interests as far as search results go. Adwords is a fairly unobtrusive advertising mechanism which certainly doesn’t affect the natural search results.

But then… those geniuses invented Adsense, a content based advertising program.

*BAM*

Now Google has a reason to act in its own interests in the search results.

Obviously, from an economics point of view, the saturation of Adsense websites makes sense up to the point at which the presence of Adsense begins to stop people from using Google. Or does it?

In Google’s perfect world, webmasters will create high quality websites that are monetized with Adsense. But that is rarely the reaility.

For example: Adsense revenue is not nearly as profitable as promoting your own money lending service in the Mortgage market. But of course Google doesn’t have a cut in that situation.

So the risk/reward Algorithm Google is working from is the one in which it works out just how many SPAMMY Adsense site’s are acceptable to the general population before people stop using Google. And Google also realizes that public perception is best controlled through BRAND PERCEPTION & PR - NOT QUALITY SEARCH RESULTS.

Ultimately Google is the “oh so clever” Company which delivers some of the worst search results while maintaining one of the best ethical veneers - on or off line. I read a headline on a business magazine the other day which said “Kids don’t ask Dad anymore, they ask Google.”

Which is truly a scary thing.

This in my opinion is a big part of the FRP - and that is a cost society bears to make a few guys rich.

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