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 Free front end information can become outdated quickly depending on the market.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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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 7:25 am and is filed under Communication, FRP Strategy, Make Money Online Tip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.