charging for an ebook vs lead generation

You should combine both preferably, first capture people's email address and then build trust and promote your premium ebook.

This is probably the best way to sell your own product because you have the ability to presell it, which shouldn't be understimated. If you direct link to your product you'll have a 1 time shot to sell which decrease your conversions a lot.

If you sell the book first and then grab the leads from the sale, you are basically pre-qualifying your leads.

In my eyes it would be best to do something to get the lead first and then work on selling them.

^ I second what Entrecon said. If you only do lead-generation based on who buys (which isn't a bad thing, as you would have a list of proven buyers!), you'll be missing out on a lot of people who don't buy your premium ebook, but may buy something down the line.

By giving away a freebie and capturing all of those email addresses you'll still be able to convert the would-be buyers into actual buyers, but now you also have a much bigger list of people who you know for a fact are interested in your niche. Down the line you'll be able to sell/promote to them, even if it's not just your premium ebook.

I think I'd give away a "report" based on the ebook to get the leads, and then offer the ebook as the next step.
With a highly specialised subject, I'm sure that would work out well.

Generally speaking...

Giving stuff away gets you a freebie seekers list.

Selling stuff gets you a buyers list.

Go for buyers. But before they know and trust you bombard them with massive value.

How about both? It really depends on which "site" you're talking about and/or what you're real intent is.

You can have a site purely for lead generation, but you can also have a very small section (or even on the thank you page) for "I just want it so let me buy it now".

On your sales page though, the page primarily meant to sell the product, you can also have a small section to collect leads. It's pretty common actually. Ticks me off as an affiliate when I see that on a sales page though. There "should" be 2 versions of the sales page. One for organic traffic with the lead collection and one strictly for affiliates without it.

It really depends on how you're setting everything up. The majority of people are focused on lead generation though and so only have the lead collection site/page. But when you think about it, If you have a product you're selling, you're going to have a sales site/page. Then you're going to have various sites like blogs etc that primarily do lead collection.

Just a couple things to think about.

I would suggest charging for the product but offering affiliates 100% of the sale. This is a great way to build a quality list quickly

I have the same issue. I'm currently giving away an eBook with huge value (75 page technical document that helps engineers to solve a specific problem). Similar textbooks sell for $30-$100. By offering it for free, I was able to capture 2000+ leads in 2 months, but I didn't make a dime in the short term. I'm working on the assumption that I'll be able to sell these leads much higher value products in the future. If I had charged $10 for the eBook, I figure the number of leads would be less than 10% of what I'd received by giving it away for free, so the future selling opportunity is much lower.

I could have given away chapter one for free (in return for email address) and tried to upsell the rest of the book, but I think giving away the whole thing has given me a lot of credibility and makes my potential clients trust me a lot more.

I'm working on the premise of 'plough massive value' first, then worry about monetizing later. I know many gurus would disagree with this method, but it's working for me so far. My next target is 10,000 on my list, then I'll start with little $20 sales and build up to a $2000 information product followed by product sales.

I vote combine both, give away a free chapter to get leads, and charge for premium version.