People will do just about anything to get something for free. They’ll line up around the block to get a free doughnut, paint their face for a sandwich, hit a button 5,000 times for a free gift, hold their hand on a car for 72 hours in order to win it. Don’t underestimate the power of free. It has a hold on each and every one of your readers to the point that they’ll do just about anything for it. I want to talk about things that you can learn today that will show you the true power of free.
I’m not just talking about your content, that’s always free, but the stuff that goes beyond your content. The sandwich will go away, so will the doughnut, but you can capitalize on free to the point that the reader will keep coming back to you again and again.
Free As An Indirect Route
Your blog has revenue, or earnings as I like to call it. Because when you look at it in the perspective of revenue being earned, that means that you understand that you have to work for it. However a lot of people have an issue with free on their blogs. They’re scared of giving things away for free. You may feel that you have worked so hard on a certain project, it provides value, and people are offering to pay for it, why would you give something away for free?
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Another point in being scared of free is the fact that you may think that it devalues your brand. Most people are afraid of free because they don’t want the problem of training their readers to expect things for free all the time.
In the above graphic (influenced by Pat), a lot of people have their blog platform and they use different ways of promotion to get traffic. That’s all well and good, but when it comes time to make the money, nobody wants to earn it. The stuff we give away on our blogs can be duplicated and shared over and over. This will continue to work for you, but you have to be willing to put the time up front for the project that you’re giving away. You should be figuring out what your target audience wants, what they need to get there, and introduce free as an indirect route to earnings.
One of the many misconceptions in blogging is people have no idea what to do with that traffic that is coming in to their blog platform. I realize that your goal is to get people on your site, but what happens next? The above graphic is typical- platform to traffic to earnings, but when you introduce free, you pull people in to where you need them to go. We already know free works, however, you have to understand how to utilize this to your advantage.
Pat Flynn, one of the smartest bloggers I know, and probably the most successful one, told me this Free does not mean profitless! It’s a indirect path to revenue.
Free Leads To Revenue
Whatever it is that you’re offering for free, you have to be able to point the reader to something that is paid. Whether it’s a course, part of an e-book, or something else. Make sure that you guide the reader so they will take the next course of action, which is the monetization stream.
First course of action
Before you can provide a call to action, you must perform an action. That is listening. Social media is the best place you can go to listen to what people need and what they want to get them to where they desire to go. Using polling options to ask questions is a great way to start. Facebook does have these at your disposal, however, since FB is moderating who can see your stream it might be more eventful to use a social platform where you know lots of engagement is.
Free is an incentive to get people to do other things. It’s not a business model that you can build around and hope to achieve success. If that were the case, then you would never make any earnings!
However your first course of action is to understand what you want people to do when they come to your site. So many people are striving for traffic, but they’ve not thought out the whole plan of action once the traffic gets there. What do you want people to do when they come to your site? You want them to buy something, a book, a course, opt in to your email list…these are all perfect examples of routes you can take where you can display free to your traffic, but are you giving people that option?
I want to challenge you today to sit down and figure out what you want people to do when they come to your site. Do you simply want them to read your content? Are you looking for more email subscribers? Perhaps you want to sell an e-book? Whatever it is, you need to figure it out because that is the right road you need to take in order to start monetizing your blog today.
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Wade Harman
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