Don't be afraid to contribute...

There always seems to be a thought in a newbies head that if they create something awesome they need to sell it for cash. Now, I know this is our end goal and we want to make money with all the things we create, but don't get stuck in only charging for everything you put out.

Something that you should learn quick is people like you more if you give them stuff for free. It's hard to build trust with someone when they don't know your true knowledge and expertise. Prove it to them with a something free. This all comes down to if you want to be building a successful long term business or making a quick couple hundred bucks.

Of course, there has to come a balance between both free gifts and what you charge for. You don't want your viewers to only expect free stuff and get upset when you actually charge.

Here's one example that I've seen happen this past week of why you should be contributing content in your niche for free. Of course we all know that free content is key to persuade viewers to join our list, but how often do you contribute content to your competitors?

That's right I said it...competitors.

Last week, I made a point to contact at least 10 competitors in my niche. I looked for well established sites that had a lot of quality content. My website is relatively new in the niche and I am still trying to build that authority status with the general public.

I first offered my competitors a free 10 page report that they can give their followers. I didn't have a single link in this report other then some links that pointed back to my competitors site. I didn't even have my name on it. I told them it was PLR for them and I only was giving it out to 10 people. They could put their own name on it, sell it, whatever they wanted to do with it. It took me about 2 hours to write a 10 page quality report ( I know this niche quite well ).

I had about 70% accepted the offer and I left it alone for a couple days.

A few short days later, I contacted each of them and made sure they liked the content and their readers were pleased. Make sure to create quality content for them or this is worthless. I then asked if I could post an article to their site about a topic of their choice. I let them know that I'm trying to build my name and would like to get my quality content out to as many viewers as possible.

Make sure they know you would like a link back to your website. I've rarely had a person not accept after they have accepted the free report.

I wrote an article for each competitor. I even mentioned their service or product in the articles that linked to their money page (people like this). I added a link to my main web page right under my name near the title and a link to my autoresponder squeeze page in the resource box.

3 of the competitors have already posted my articles to their site. These competitors I went after have pretty decent traffic numbers. I've seen an increase of 30 subscribers per day since these articles were posted.

This is huge guys and girls. The statistic you always hear is you will earn $1 per 1 subscriber to a list. So this is adding $30 to my monthly income EVERY DAY! Of course this is just a statistic, so I'm not going to hold it to that.

That's not the point though. Contribute not only to your followers, but also to your competitors.

If there is one thing I've learned about making it big, it would be making friends is key. You can increase your business ten fold with only 1 right connection. Giving away quality content is only going to help you make these connections.

I know sometimes competitors can be hard to negotiate with since any smart internet marketer is going to know what you are after...some of their traffic. Just make sure to offer the best quality you have and make sure that what you offer is of at least equal value of what you are trying to get from them.

The articles I wrote are going to drive traffic to their money page as well. They are going to make more money from my articles and free report, and I'm going to make more money from the subscribers I pull from those articles.