What can I give out for free!

Cheat sheet a.k.a Hot Sheet getting more and more popular in the last year

I agree. I'm focusing on delivering legitimate value before making my move.

Gordon,

As you say, free "is the defacto go to list builder." Why? Because from my own experience and most tests by others that I have reviewed, "free" generally is better received than "paid" as a method of growing a list. It's important to get subscribers on a list so you can contact them via follow-up emails. Then, once they are on your list, you can apply your "3 bux for a one page pdf" strategy to create a separate buyers list.

I think some people (in fact, many people) need to be exposed to your marketing with multiple contact points before they are confident enough to pull out their credit card. If you offer a paid product on initial contact, IMO, you will not get many of this group on your list.

Hence, the age-old dilemma, is it worth nurturing "freebie" enticed subscribers? Will any of them ever become buyers? My experience is ... yes, it is worth it and yes, some will become buyers. But you'll probably not find these folks is they don't subscribe to your marketing first.

Just my own opinion,

Steve

Wow I was thinking something similar. I've heard some pros making stupid money utilizing this technique.

Well said brent....

To add to that

Just depends who your tryna attract..."freebie seekers" or "actual spenders"

Free offers CAN work

But You can waste time and effort puffing up the numbers with freebie seekers who are gonna "run a mile" when you make an offer anyway


Or you can make a strong case for why they should spend a small fee to obtain what you have and build a list of "serious people"

Your cost is spent driving traffic, so you owe it to yourself to make sure you attract the most profitable crowd

(The large majority never read them pdfs anyway...but it should still give value and sell them on the idea of something)


Whether they buy it or not will depend on 2 things

1) the ad that sends them to the offer
2) the case you make for the offer on the page

But this is where you "get your hands dirty"

Put some time,effort and most importantly money to find out

Because the answer to that wont be found in these threads

All the best
Esmarshall

Yup, this is what I'd recommend too.

What a lot of people lose track of is why they are building a list.

The whole idea is to enable ongoing communication with the people likely to buy your product, not to see whose is biggest. "List size" is one of those vanity metrics that make marketers' egos swell much more than their bank accounts.

While I'm not disagreeing with your approach, especially in the biz-opp field, a good freebie is a sorting mechanism. It should give those people who should be on your list that last little push needed to give up their email. It should also send the people who should not be on the list on their way, happy for not wasting their time collecting something of no interest to them.

Easy example, people who will watch anything as a video, but won't read anything. Offering a PDF without the video pretty much filters those people out and attracts the readers. Or you could switch those around to the same effect - if your offer is in video format only, people who don't like video are filtered out.

If people structured their lead generation efforts towards getting the right people in and the wrong people out instead of getting into meaningless 'list measuring' contests, they'd do far better.