Is it a good idea to sell an ebook as an entry product to upsell expensive products ?

These are both basic strategies and entry points for a sales funnel. I would give away an ebook that promotes an affiliate product with a good sales funnel. It may not be wise to give away an ebook and immediately promote a $500 product, but if you have an entry-level product under $100 that promotes the $500 product, you may be able to sell on both ends.

Benjamin Ehinger

That's a fairly routine sales funnel. You could go:

Lead magnet --> emails --> ebook --> emails --> affiliate offer(s)

Or, potentially, if you have a strong lead magnet and the right targeting:

Lead magnet --> emails --> affiliate offer(s)

To some people, $500 is expensive. To others, it's cheap.

Just my opinion here but ebooks seem to be dying in my niche. And they typically don't work well because most people who get a free ebook that's 50-200 pages aren't going to read the entire thing. What you really need is a strong lead magnet that's 1-2 pages and lets your customer get a 'quick win' based on the information you give them then follow it with valuable content via email.

By itself, an eBook has no value - it's all about the contents. To convert cold traffic those contents had better be both spectacular and relevant to the traffic source.

Whether you package that as an eBook, a short PDF report, cheatsheet, video or whatever is largely irrelevant.

Converts 87.23 % which is standard across the board for about all IMers

Most marketers nowadays are giving out free ebooks as lead magnets. If your book is really very valuable and you can't give it away for free, you can try pricing it minimally so you can hook up as many upsells as possible.

Alternatively, you can create a second toned down version of your current ebook and give it away for free to upsell both your full-version ebook and your $500 product. People always love free things -especially if they offer good value.

Thanks to everyone for these advices.

I think I'll make a 2-3 page PDF with a free and a paid version including cheat sheets, checklist and stuff like that, it will be more valuable to them.

After giving free videos in my emails, I'll upsell the affiliates products, firstly an entry-level and then the 500$ one.

You really helped me a lot, hope it'll increase my conversions

There are so many variables that it's not easy to give a one size fits all answer.

Free ebooks, printed books, USBs, video training courses and webinars can all be effective as a lead magnets. But they need to be of good quality to lead someone further up the funnel.

We are fond of free soft covers and USBs with cost for shipping. The addition of a shipping cost will turn some away, but we are looking for truly interested subscribers and the added fee eliminates a lot of half-hearted tire kickers.

Testing for your particular niche and products is ultimately the most effective way of finding what works best. As Thomas Edison once said: ""I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work," said Thomas Edison.

Well I have done this one time and it is to risky my friend , stick with the regular selling.

Done this all day long for my own back-end products.

If goal is affiliate product I would focus my time/energy on getting huge attention and bringing them back to a lead magnet.

Sounds like you are coming around to that with your PDF idea. Focus should be on getting good uptake on lead magnet - you could always give away other material (ebook, etc...) as bonus tied to the affiliate offer (which helps differentiate you from other affiliates)

Jeff

It may seem routine and basic but the reason why a lot of people chose these methods is because they work.

You could be a little different and instead of an ebook do a video or series of videos.