Blogging and Giving Away Free Stuff is a Bad Business Model
A well known person who does participate in the "how to make money online" market, did away with their free blog.
This led to confusion by someone who obviously followed this marketer closely and I'm sure a bunch of other people who follow him as well. This is what their thread, that I referenced in the opening sentence, was about...the confusion they were experiencing over this persons decision to do away with providing free content.
I totally understand where this confusion comes from.
It can be very confusing when someone you have been listening to, who has been touting the benefits of free content and has long been an advocate of "moving the free line" now writes an email, talking about giving away free content, stating:
Quote: "Then stop being stupid by giving it away! If you had anything of any real value, why the heck would it be FREE? Either your content sucks or you are just trying to bait and switch your readers. Either way, you suck! I promise that's the way your customers see it! ....If you're going to post content...then give it some thought first and actually make a freaking effort and get paid." |
Frankly, it is just a business decision on his part to do away with his blog, and I would bet it's a numbers game.
Based on how many people he gets to join his list from his blog, and how many people he get's buying his products from blog articles, I would guess the numbers show, based on estimates, that it is more profitable to charge a small amount than to...
...keep coming up with free content...
that you spend lots of time, and more time, and more time to create...
...that you simply give away and then...give and give and give some more
...and then you wait and hope and hope and hope....
...that the people who visit the blog and read and view the free content will....eventually....like you, trust you and then...
hopefully....buy one of your products.
He has changed to the simple business model of: Create content - charge for it.
To make money, you have to sell something. Whether that something is a product (your own or someone else's), or advertising space (be it sponsored ads or contextual ads such as google adsense) if you don't sell something you don't make money.
I had a very successful information publisher tell me that he thought the whole "move the free line" concept was nonsense. Almost everyone he knew that adopted it suffered monetarily from doing so. And most of the people touting it, did so because they want you to perceive that the free material they were giving had incredible value, but most of what is being given away as free was "What?" material not, "How To?" material. And there is a big difference between "What?" and "How to?"
Another well known marketer states that the income from his blog - a very high traffic blog - is nothing in comparison to what he makes from simply directly selling a product. And, the main benefit of his blog is not income, but to help him get things like speaking gigs and to be published elsewhere.
A test you can do yourself is this:
Look at many of the big names, who mainly sell their own information products, who are supporters of "moving the free line" or "give away a lot of cool stuff" and see if you can find their blogs with consistently updated and large amounts of free content.
If you look at many people who are successful with blogging, they will tell you that much of their income comes from the sale of products.
When they give you break downs of how their blog makes money - If they had a big jump in monthly income, much of the time they will mention a new product they started selling that provided the big jump in revenue.
The basics never go away.
Does giving away a lot of "how to" content that teaches lead to more people buying your own information products because they have come to trust and like you? Or, does it just condition them to wait for and expect more free stuff from you?
To make money, you have to sell something.
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