Give it away for for profit.
Here is a well-known, but little used fact: People like free
things. If you went to a street corner and started handing out
staples, people would line up to take them from you. This is
true even if you were giving away something they don't need. If
you told them the staples cost $2, they would feel proud of
having snagged one for free.
Now what would happen if you gave out something that people
actually wanted, that they actually wanted to pay for, even
stand in line for. In fact, we assume that if something is given
away free then it must be inherently invaluable about it. When
we receive something that we know has value, either in dollars
or in its interest to us, we not only remember who gave it to
us, but we actually feel indebted to them.
Seth Godin is the author of an amazing book called 'the
ideadvirus'. In that book, to simplify, he states that in order
to quickly spread a message (virus), one needs to give something
of value away, make it significant enough that others spread it
on your behalf, and if the message is 'virus-worthy' it will
quickly spread through a group without much work from you. How
can you profit from this? Read the book. To illustrate this,
Seth gave the whole book away free on his site, asking only for
emails in return and he asked readers to forward the book onto
friends and workmates. Knowing the crowd he was looking infect
with his virus, he knew that if they liked what they read - they
would want to tell people and boast of what they smartly found
for free. He actually had about 400 000 downloads in the first
few weeks, and just before you think he made no money: when he
released the hardcover through amazon.com, it climbed to the top
of its sales charts. In fact people who had bought the ebook
version, went and purchased the hardcover - they felt like they
owed Seth. This was a 400 page book... I read it, twice - it was
that good, and proof of the actual theory he was exposing.
Be aware that what is free for your visitors will cost you
something - it will cost you in your bandwidth/hosting costs, it
will definitely cost you something in terms of time and effort
to produce the site and the very thing you give away - but if
you play the strategy right, it can pay off well. Get a good
idea of what you are trying to accomplish, and determine what
you can do or give away to help you grow.
1. get something of value to your audience 2. Get them to give
you something in return - their email and their friends email 3.
Give them permission and instructions on how to share that free
download. 4. Encourage, or reward those who share that download
(sometimes if your stuff is good - the pride of sharing
something great is enough to motivate people - but it has to be
amazing!) 5. With all the awareness, buzz and traffic you
generate - find away of profiting from that.
It's not hard, but its easy to get greedy and mess up the
strategy. In fact it takes a lot of courage to do this. You will
be giving away something you could be earning from - Seth Godin
gave up 500,000 potential sales - instead he had 500,000
advertisers who willingly and honestly spreading the word in a
well defined market which resulted in sales of that book - and
with his new popularity, many others. By the way, I don't think
its free anymore. It doesn't need to be... companies actually
buy books by the box for all their marketing employees. How did
that happen? Because some net savy marketing VP downloaded the
book - loved it, and bought a hard copy for his CEO, who thought
it was brilliant and ordered it for everyone... and the waves of
impact spread. You can do this too!
Learn from the masters. Find a mentor who can help you do your
best!