How to create hi-value lead magnets (opt-in giveaways, short reports, etc) quickly & easily

Some Warrior Forum give-back - I originally posted this in my private FB group, thought some here may find it useful:

I do a lot of lead magnets for a pretty wide range of businesses & niches.

Since lead magnets (“Lead Magnet” = freebies, opt-in bait, giveaways, free reports, etc.) can be such a crucial tool for lead generation, I thought I’d expand on something I recently posted in a Facebook group when someone asked where to get “good lead magnets”.

If you need good lead magnets – and who doesn’t – or are struggling to create a strong lead magnet, here are two easy-to-produce, effective, high-value means: 1) online resources, and 2) ‘Best Of’ compendiums.

1) Online resources. For any business, niche, or interest, there are TONS of excellent free resources online, most of them almost certainly unknown even to most people in those businesses, niches, etc.

Putting together a clickable PDF of valuable, relevant, and free resources can be hugely valuable.

(In fact, I built one of my first for-sale products this way: “The Xxxx Xxxx’s Almanac – Everything you need for Xxxx, for free!” It was a listing of over 40 free online resources (websites and online apps), broken into a few catagories, each with a description and a clickable link to its respective website. I sold hundreds of copies before selling the whole thing as a business for $8k, and have since produced close to two dozen similar resource-listings-as-product)

An example that could be used for a pretty wide range of business or niches would be something like ‘Free Small Business Resources’ and list free resources & apps for small business accounting (free sites that offer full accounting functions, etc), other financial resources, automation resources such as free online FAX services, free online backup services, etc.

(You can increase the perceived value and make more specifically tailored reports by focusing on specific types of resources, by how you arrange them, and by how you title it i.e. “The Best Free Productivity Tools For Realtors”)

I’m a heavy Evernote user, and so whenever I come across a resource, free app, etc. (and I jump on articles or posts that themselves list free resources, such as “22 Websites With Great Free Stock Photo’s” that I recently came across), I save the page in Evernote and add the tag “resource”, and perhaps another tag for the niche or type.

As a result, between Evernote and a little research (Googling “best free xxxxxx” for instance), I can quickly compile a list of free resources that would work for almost any circumstance.

I paste them into a Word document, usually under various category headings, grab a description snippet of each from its website, create a clickable table of contents, find a relevant image for the cover, then save the whole thing as a PDF.

2) ‘Best Of’ or ‘How-To’ compendiums. This again is something I’ve done both as an opt-in freebie and as a paid product.

Go to article directories like Ezinearticles, comb through relevant categories, and grab a handful of the best articles in each of a few related areas, create a table of contents and a cover, and combine them into a single PDF.

(With article directories like Ezinearticles, you are allowed and encouraged to do this so long as you keep the ‘bio box’ intact. You can find dozens of articles directories by Googling “best article directories”.)

And so, using that same general small business niche example, you might put together some articles on hiring, motivating sales people, lowering burnout, or a hundred other useful topics that wouldn’t impinge on your main value topic.

To take that a bit further, you can do the same thing with public domain and/or Creative Commons content – or even just grab some high-quality, high-value PD or CC content alone, dress it up & pdf it, and viola! you have your awesome high-value freebie!