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Giving stuff away. Where does it end?

by Marbeloa
12 replies
So U2 are giving away their album for free on iTunes. On the Internet we are told to give away ebooks, high-value webinars, free coaching sessions, a free version of a service or product. My sense is consumers are being trained, like Pavlovs Dogs, to now expect free. Maybe the "Age of Free" has devalued people's perception of everything?

So to my question... is anyone actually making decent money selling courses online? The only ones that appear to be successful are:

"How To Make Money Online" (by joining my affiliate programme)
or
"How to Get More Facebook Fans" (so you can give away more free content that you spent weeks creating)
or
"How to Build Your YouTube Channel" (so you can give away hours of free video content)
or
"How to Build Your Twitter following" (whilst you work out some way to monetise them)

Is anyone actually making a healthy living getting paying customers buying a course with original educational content (not directly related to making money on the Internet)? I'm am looking for a successful case study.

Or are you finding that there are so many free tutorials online, all-you-can-eat courses at $10 a month, expert interviews, YouTube videos, Hangouts, etc that people really don't see the value in "paid-for" online courses anymore, (unless maybe they are "Colleges" where people expect to pay thousands in tuition)?
#end #giving #online courses #stuff
  • Profile picture of the author weeklyes
    I think the courses that are short but to the point help sell well - I've seen products less than 30 pages that seem to fly off the shelves. Of course, that might be because of other affiliates promoting with a 100% commission.

    There is this WSO recently released that says to build a funnel where your optin is a freebie but buyers get sent to a OTO that costs relatively not a lot. So the creator can now make 2 lists - a freebie seeker and a buyer list. I am thinking of doing that myself.

    I think the value happens as well for the "time saved". Who wants to spend hours and hours digesting stuff?
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    Udemy.com is proof that money can be made by teaching people lots of stuff other than how to make money online.
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    • Profile picture of the author Marbeloa
      Thanks Will and Weeklyes.

      Apart from Udemy - any other good sites?

      I see Treehouse (teamtreehouse.coa) and Lynda.com which prove that "skill based" (and mainly technical) courses are popular.

      Any others, especially around more "life based skills".

      Has anyone every submitted a course to Udemy? What is their experience?
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      • Profile picture of the author wiifm
        Originally Posted by Marbeloa View Post

        Thanks Will and Weeklyes.

        Apart from Udemy - any other good sites?

        I see Treehouse (teamtreehouse.coa) and Lynda.com which prove that "skill based" (and mainly technical) courses are popular.

        Any others, especially around more "life based skills".

        Has anyone every submitted a course to Udemy? What is their experience?
        I have taken some courses there and some are pure junk, so one has to be careful.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulie123
    Do not give anything away unless it is a free chapter of an ebook or course you have available for sale. This way they get a free preview of your product and you get their name for your list. From there, work it to convert the lead into a sale! My two sense!
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnnyPlan
      Originally Posted by paulie123 View Post

      Do not give anything away unless it is a free chapter of an ebook or course you have available for sale. This way they get a free preview of your product and you get their name for your list. From there, work it to convert the lead into a sale! My two sense!
      This idea works especially well for fiction writers where the buyer might be hesitant to purchase from an author they had not read before. The internet is not like the library where you can just pick up a book and skim a few random pages. Role model what Amazon is doing by their 'peek inside' feature. This does not require any type of opt in, however it increases the chance of sale, assuming the ebook offers what the customer wants.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Rogers
    First, U2 didn't give anything away. Apple paid $100 million for a license to give it away, so it's Apple giving it away, not U2. Apple did $171 billion in sales last year, with $35 billion in net income. So that $100 million price tag is all a matter of perspective.

    Anyway, in a crowded market you must do things to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Giving away something of quality is one way to do that. It's a proven method of introducing yourself to new customers and building credibility with them. It's also a good way of keeping your current customers engaged and interested in you. People are much more likely to buy from someone they know than from someone they don't.
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  • Profile picture of the author misshang
    if you really want to give something away, join a jv giveaway activity, and get some people get on your list from others. it's better than trying to figure out how to get people on your list individually. please try to leverage other people's experience and their list.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Originally Posted by Marbeloa View Post

    is anyone actually making decent money selling courses online?
    If you know your stuff, there is a market to sell to. The problems arise when you aren't really qualified to teach anyone, but try anyway.

    Many people on this forum are of the mindset that even if you are just an "advanced newbie" on a topic, you can sell to "total newbies" because you know more than they do. That in theory sounds good, but the truely experienced people consider such content to be expendable and give it away for free in the name of drawing traffic. The "advanced newbie" trying to sell similar material is then left trying to find buyers who haven't found the loads of free material yet.
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    • Profile picture of the author snakeyes37
      Originally Posted by DubDubDubDot View Post

      If you know your stuff, there is a market to sell to. The problems arise when you aren't really qualified to teach anyone, but try anyway.

      Many people on this forum are of the mindset that even if you are just an "advanced newbie" on a topic, you can sell to "total newbies" because you know more than they do. That in theory sounds good, but the truely experienced people consider such content to be expendable and give it away for free in the name of drawing traffic. The "advanced newbie" trying to sell similar material is then left trying to find buyers who haven't found the loads of free material yet.
      I have to disagree.

      Something my coach tells all his students. It goes like this, learn, do, teach.

      Learn a skill, implement it, and teach it to others. Everybody had to learn something at some point. No one is born with the skill sets and knowledge from the get go.

      There's also this thing called "reverse engineering". Tony Robbins calls it "modeling". Pick out several people that are successful and model what they do. Success leaves clues, why are you going to reinvent the wheel when somebody else has already done all the hard work for you?

      Then there's another thing called leverage. Most of all this information can be found by doing a simple Google search but most won't goto that length.
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  • Profile picture of the author AmericanMuscleTA
    The info-marketing business is a giant pyramid.

    Take a look at Robert Skrob's Information Marketing Business Pyramid.

    The base of the pyramid is Email Opt-Ins/Free Content.

    Then you move up the pyramid...

    Introductory Product
    Continuity Program
    High-Priced Products
    Seminars
    Group Coaching Program
    Implementation Services
    Personal Coaching

    Obviously, most people go for the free content, then as you move up the pyramid you get fewer and fewer people but the prices go higher and higher.

    I don't currently sell info-products (though I'm starting to create them for the real estate niche), but I am an affiliate with GKIC and I see how this pyramid works all the time... and it all starts with giving something away, for FREE.
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  • Profile picture of the author fated82
    I had this term in my free ebook 'Useful but incomplete' which was coined by a veteran Internet marketer Jimmy D Brown.

    The concept is to give away stuff that is useful but yet it doesn't reveal the whole secret. You've got to buy the 'part 2' to learn that secret.

    One of the best email marketer Matt Furey stated that you should give them the 'What' but not the 'How', which is basically the same as above. Tell them what to do, but not how to do it.

    If they want to know how, they have to purchase the second part of your series.

    If you want to learn how to create free stuff that lead them to pay, check out this course by Jimmy D Brown.

    :: Free To Fee System - How To Create That Helps Convert Browsers Into Buyers (no affiliate).
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