Tips please - How to make money giving away a product for free

by EntreP
14 replies
Who have some great tips for me about how you can make money giving away a product for free. My product doesn't sell as good as it should be, but it's a great product and there is certainly a niche for it. I want to give my product away for free to make some money out of almost every "customer".

What are the options?
#free #giving #make #money #product #tips
  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    You will never make money out of almost every "customer"
    who grabs a freebie. Sorry. That's life. But you can
    work the numbers and profit from even a small email
    list if you work carefully to do it.

    But you can, with diligent and testing figure out how to
    reach a niche-interest group with a freebie offer they will
    respond too. Grabbing a freebie is an indicator of interest
    but not an indicator of ability or willingness to spend money.

    Perceived value is registered by today's web-surfers almost
    instantly, so nice-looking graphics matter, even for your
    freebies. The graphics need to make the freebie seem
    exciting.

    Graphics and copy for opt-in page freebie offers are all
    about packaging the "big idea" of what people will GET
    for giving you their email and some of their time. The time
    things is really important to understand. You need to make
    the offer attractive in terms of the time they'll need to
    invest in getting value from your product.

    This is all perceptual.

    I know that's a mysterious statement, but the rabbit hole of
    persuasion sciences is deep indeed. Only the dedicated win
    at this game.
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    • Profile picture of the author gjabiz
      Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye View Post


      Grabbing a freebie is an indicator of interest
      but not an indicator of ability or willingness to spend money.
      And this, fellow Warriors, is a concept you must wrap your head around.

      THANK YOU Loren, More HOW TO in that one sentence than in many ebooks being sold.

      In general, you want someone with

      A) The ABILITY to spend money.
      B) The WILLINGNESS to spend money.

      A great starting point for any product development.

      gjabiz

      PS. That being said, I have made a lot of money from giving away stuff, mostly by embedding other offers in the FREEBIE.
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      • Profile picture of the author oneplusone
        One thing you could try is a 7 day no risk trial, if you use PayPal for example you can set it up where they get the product for free initially to see if they like it - and it charges them in 7 days time.

        If they don't like it they can cancel on their own with PayPal and keep the product.

        As long as your product is decent, a fair percentage of people will honour the payment - even though they know they can cancel and keep the product for free.

        Especially if the payment is fairly low and the product is decent, most people will honour the payment as they will feel guilty about not paying if they feel you have put effort into your product, and it is of some benefit to them.

        If you are using this method you have to hammer the point home, that there is NO RISK whatsoever to them, and they are in no doubt whatsoever that they will only pay if they like your product - and they are in complete control of whether they pay or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author jbento
    Originally Posted by EntreP View Post

    Who have some great tips for me about how you can make money giving away a product for free. My product doesn't sell as good as it should be, but it's a great product and there is certainly a niche for it. I want to give my product away for free to make some money out of almost every "customer".

    What are the options?
    Hi

    You say you want to give your product away and make money out of almost every customer. Something doesn't sound right... if you give your product for free how are you going to make money?

    You must plan before you act. If you have a product, that you believe it has value, you have two options:

    a) You give something for free related with your product, software, a summary of your report, something that the potential customers like and they want more... they you'll try to sell your product as a "upgrade" for the free product you gave

    b) You give your product away and then you must create something that is complementary to your product, like a video course or a tutorial. Or you can just try to sell affiliate products related with your product.

    These are two possible approaches, but remember you must plan... what to give and how to make money after giving something. If you just give your product away without a strategy, you'll make no money.

    Jorge
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    The obvious is to include affiliate links in it that relate to subject matter.

    Here's another idea. Instead of giving away the product, create a short report to give away on the same topic. Provide some useful information, but hold some back and point people to the commercial version for a more in-depth treatment. If they find the free information useful, and there are enough benefits to buying the full version, you should see your fair share of conversions. You might try giving them a discount on the full product, too. People like getting deals.
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    • Profile picture of the author EntreP
      Wow, great tips so far. I will summary the tips for my own reference (and of others of course)

      I want to make money by giving away a product for free. My product has value, but nobody whants to invest in a product in this niche. So I have to find a way to give my product for free and make as much money as possible thereafter.

      1. I can give a related product for free and sell my product as an upgrade. If customers liked the free product, most likely they will buy a paid product that's going more in depth in the material.

      2. I can give my product away for free and then create a product that's complementary to my product and sell the upsell.

      3. I can work with relevant affiliate links in my product which I will earn a commission of if someone purchase something through one of my links.

      4. I have to plan a strategy before I take action.

      5. "Create a short report to give away on the same topic. Provide some useful information, but hold some back and point people to the commercial version for a more in-depth treatment. If they find the free information useful, and there are enough benefits to buying the full version, you should see your fair share of conversions" Thanks to Dennis
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      • Profile picture of the author Christian York
        Originally Posted by EntreP View Post


        3. I can work with relevant affiliate links in my product which I will earn a commission of if someone purchase something through one of my links.
        Giving away your product for free can be a great way to make money.

        Like Dennis said above, look to see if their is any complimentary affiliate products/cpa offers that you can include in the back end.

        You could also provide advertising space on your download page and in the product itself where local companies or complimentary companies may like to advertise.

        You can also use the product to entice people to sign up to your list and then again promote complimentary affiliate products/cpa offers.

        Try to simply get your report into as many hands as people. Give it to fellow marketers in your niche to give away to their lists as content.

        If you make the product viral, then you can profit in the back end.

        If however their is no complimentary affiliate products/cpa offers or companies wanting to advertise, then you have chosen the wrong niche mate.

        Or you could provide all the info in the product for free on a blog and make money through adsense, if people are looking for free information.

        Hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author HorseStall
    If the product is support intensive you can charge for support or education. The best way of course is to sell the free product to Google when it reaches critical mass ;-)
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  • Profile picture of the author EntreP
    Many good tips and advice about this subject already in this topic. Is there an e-book about make money by giving away your product for free?
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    • Profile picture of the author Matt Morgan
      You can give Chapter 1 of your product away for free, in a free sample report, and at the end put a sentence saying

      If you want the full report, then visit this page

      But in this free chapter, make the content hot, so that they are hungry for more.

      If they find they find your free content hot then they might be tempted to purchase the paid version. Make it affordable too.
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      • Profile picture of the author MatthewM
        You could leave your sales page up in tact, and give it away as your bonus for purchasing your next product or affiliate program.

        I do this for one particular product. I have a full page sales letter. I then give them an option to buy or get it as a free bonus for joining a recurring IM product of a competitor.

        I actually make more give it away as a free bonus instead because of recurring commissions.

        You can also take the loss leader approach and give it away to build your list to promote your up and coming product, but once again leave your sales page in tact and payment buttons.

        You could incorporate a viral aspect.

        For instance

        Option 1

        Buy Now $47

        Option 2

        Send 50 people to this page to receive product FREE

        And give them a few promotional ideas to get those 50 visitors

        Like forum sig marketing, emailing their contacts, posting on their twitter, myspace, facebook etc.

        Most people would attempt to send 50 visitors instead of paying for the product

        and the thing is however when people post links they stay there.

        At some point in time you could then remove the offer and capitalize on the traffic coming to your site now that a few hundred people blasted your site all over the internet.
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    Take a look at the "7 dollar secrets" strategy.
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  • Profile picture of the author addykho
    Your copywriting must be very good. It is getting very competitive nowadays in the make money online niche. You have to stand out among the crowds. Or else I wouldn't simply opt in for any freebies.
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  • Profile picture of the author Algo
    Originally Posted by EntreP View Post

    it's a great product and there is certainly a niche for it.
    We're all presuming this part of your question is true... all of the above strategies are great and can work if, in fact, you are correct in that your product is great and that there is a market for it.

    How do you know this is true? Did you do market research which led you to conclude there is a demand for your product before you created it?

    It is a common mistake for people to create a product because they think there is a need, where there really is not.

    If you didn't create your product after first confirming that there is in fact a demand for it, I suggest you find a small group of people interested in your niche and give your product to them for free in exchange for honest feedback. These should not be people you know. Then use the feed back to make changes to the product and the marketing associated with it, if necessary.
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