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Underselling myself?

by YseUp
5 replies
Am I underselling myself? People are paying me for e-books on fiverr.com that I give away for free on my site. Read on.

So I'm working on setting up a membership site in a music playing niche.

I believe I've got an innovative way of teaching certain principles of playing music. I've created some freebies in order to create a list and the feedback so far has been good.

I was checking out a competitor that advertises all over the internet, I clicked on their link and opted in to their list for freebie. I was shocked it was a 1 page .pdf. That's it? His autoresponders e-mails were nothing to write home about. But this person is advertising everywhere so must have optimized this and make good money. This marketer is going after the complete newbie and provides them what they are looking for.

My freebies are 2 14-page .pdf's. With really good info in my opinion and as an experiment I decided to throw them up on fiverr. To my surprise I've had a couple of people want to pay me $5 for this info. And they were really satisfied with what they got.

So what do I do?

Am I suffering the 'experts blindspot' where I overestimate how much newbies know. Should I focus on really basic information.

Should I sell my freebies? Sell it for $5 - $7?

More aggressively market my freebies? I would really like the freebies to be spread by word of mouth in order to grow my list.

BTW, I believe the information that I will provide in my membership site to be 10X as good as these freebies.

What would you do?
#underselling
  • Profile picture of the author sal64
    The beginner's market is extremely lucrative, and is my favorite demographic. I also work on the assumption that 90% of customers are clueless, so I keep it very simple.

    Perhaps you can look at selling basic things, then upselling them into the membership site with more advanced content?

    Also, if your free stuff is too good to give away, but you want to build your list... why not offer the #1 secret for free and if they want the rest, they have to buy the report?

    Fire your biggest cannon with the free tip and wow them with your genius. Then on the download page, offer the 12 page pdf got $9.97. Those that buy this will be super hot prospects for your membership site. Heck, you can even offer the report with a 30 day membership trial and put them on automatic billing.

    Too easy!
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    • Profile picture of the author Devid Farah
      Hi Yseup,

      There are several options you can look at. You can try giving away one of the books for free while requiring a payment for the second. You can try creating a very condensed, short overview of the books and give that away for free.

      There are several different options. In the end you need to decide which is more important to you: your list or making that $7. If you try to excel in both areas then you will get watered down results.

      You need to pick which one is the most important to you and build your strategy around that.
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  • Profile picture of the author butch04
    I would give away the basics and maybe even a free copy still.

    There are 2 things I would look into doing.

    1. Give away free copy with the basics and then when they
    enter in name & email up sell them on your best content package
    where they can go from beginner to expert or whatever.

    You can also turn this into an affiliate program where you can give
    away 100% or 50% commissions. People will help build your list &
    promote your site at the same time.

    Or.

    2. Give away a great freebie that over delivers and people will
    think your cool and know what your really talking about. When
    their done with the great freebie you can use that as your
    marketing tactic to sell them on your next e-book. Saying
    something like "If you liked my last e-book you'll love this one
    even more".

    This way people will already have a feel for your content and
    how great it is. They'll look at it and say OK he knows his stuff
    so I'm going to buy his second e-book cause the first one he
    gave me for free was just great.

    Hopefully all this make sense
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  • Profile picture of the author mandark
    I recommend trying different things out to see what works for your customers. Maybe give them the first page for free, and then charge $5 to get the rest of it. If that doesn't scare away too many of your customers, keep it up or even think about charging a bit more. If it does, try different tactics.
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  • Profile picture of the author mikemcmillan
    I'm not sure what music niche you're working in or what instruments you focus on. But have you thought about creating videos demonstrating your techniques. Getting someone to pay for an ebook means they are essentially buying something sight unseen even though you have described it in print.

    But with music, perhaps you could create a free video that shows how to play some cool little riff for people to download for free. You could then show a link in your video where people could get more videos with related PDF files for a price.

    I mean, if you can engage them with sight and sound in your video maybe you could sell more of your stuff. I've bought guitar stuff online where it was sold that way. Good luck! --Mike
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