Can I Pick Your Brain?

He makes a lot of fair points.. If you have valuable info that can help others in major ways, you should put a premium on it. Hence why I don't mind paying for WSO's and never act like the freebie seekers who want "review" copies. If the info is good,I'm GLAD I payed for it; not only will it SEEM more valuable, but I know that those who took the time to learn, implement, and present great info are being compensated as well. Good times for all.

Honestly, I completely disagree with the guy that wrote this...

Yes, you do need to enhance the perceived value of your products whenever possible, but...

I'm a firm believer that the more I give, even if I don't charge for it (especially if I don't charge for it), the more good will come back to me...

Yes, that may sound a little too "warm and fuzzy" for most. In the book The Go Giver, the authors say something along these lines...

"Most people laugh when they hear the secret of success [giving away massive value], but then again, most people aren't as successful as they'd like to be."

There are people out there that will give away for free what you are charging for, and consequently they're stealing your customers! The big money is made on the back-end, not caring about giving up a few bucks on the front end.

I pretty much agree with what they said. My favorite quote I found was,

My brain costs money to maintain.

So if you want to help out with my brain's maintenance fee, I'll be glad to guide you. Now, I'm guilty of giving away a whale of a lot of free advice, and it does make me feel good sometimes, but a lot of times free advice is mistaken for advice that is not worth much. Still, I do it.

The article does make me think about this, however. I've often thought about setting up a FAQ site which features many of the most frequently asked questions I get. I wouldn't have detailed info there, just general tips and probably suggestions as to where people could search for more info. I think I may have to work on that. A the bottom of the page I could just have a link to another page where I would offer to do some one-on-one for a fee.

Most of us have done our learning the hard way. Either by paying to learn things or investing time in learning on our own. In reality, others should expect to do the same. The other thing is that when you give out free info, and if you are honest with people about their questions, a lot of times they don't like what you tell them. I would, however, opt for the honesty factor than to give people warm fuzzies about ideas they have you simply know won't work.

The other thing is that the better questions people ask, the easier it is to answer them. When someone writes, "Can you give me ideas for making money online?" I think to myself, "Sure, I can give you ideas for how to do brain surgery if you want, but you're better off doing some research on your own."

Learning how to make money online involves some form of sacrifice. Maybe financial, maybe time, maybe other things. Those who want shortcuts looking for ways to avoid making sacrifices are probably in the wrong business to begin with. But yeah, Scrofford, that article has some good points. I generally liked it. --Mike

One of the best IMers, in my opinion, Matt Furey, never gives anything away. And I'd be willing to bet there's hardly anyone around making as much as he does.

I was giving stuff away for so long I realised I was making sod-all to live on.

Why would anyone buy anything off you if you're giving them everything they need? It doesn't make sense.

Why do people go into business? To make money.

Anyone who says it's to help others, send me a PM and I'll send you my address. Just ship me all your products. You'd really be helping me out.

As all of the most successful IMers all 'give' the shop away these days followed by a genuine product then I think that just about says it all

Give away a small ebook (a sampling of what you offer) that brings value, in order to get a person to join your list (autoresponder). This will start to bring trust and builds a relationship with you new opted in person. Then continue to bring tidbits of information to them, of course having a links to purchase the whole the system in each emailing.

The New York Times just took a big gamble by going behind a paywall. I'd love to know how that is working out for them.

It is hard to strike the right balance between providing free valuable info vs charging for it. Once you train your audience to expect free stuff from you, it could be tricky and hard to get them to open their wallets.