Give Your Book Away FREE - And Profit From It For Life!

You see it all the time; someone, somewhere, is offering something free of charge, you might wonder why! But there’s no one, single reason people give quality items free of charge, in fact there are several. More often than not it’s to create confidence, generate credibility, and increase trust between the seller and the often wary buyer!

The Internet is one of the scariest places to be, especially when seeing a product you’d like to buy, from someone you don’t know and may never have heard of until today, and you probably won’t ever get to communicate with the seller in person. Difficult choice? Decide to buy, give your credit card number, take a risk?

Hope their product is all they say it is, hope you will in fact receive your product, hope there will be someone to resolve whatever queries and after sales issues arise!

Look at it from that other person’s point of view. It’s frightening and it’s a problem you can quickly and easily solve and work to your advantage.

By giving something useful free of charge you can establish a relationship of trust between you and your prospective buyer. And if you are prepared to do this, go the extra mile, while rival companies focus always on Money First, Money Last, And Nothing In Between, you’ll win a customer, not just for a day, but possibly for life!

Let’s consider a whole host of reasons why offering free information can increase your business success.

To Raise Funds For A Special Cause

A book aimed primarily at raising funds for charity can include some means of promoting your other interests and therefore compensate you for the time, money and energy used in creating and marketing the book.

An example is a book I want to write one day, about heroic dogs and cats, and focusing on animals that gave their lives in the service of man. The book will focus on military cats and dogs and other service animals, including sniffer dogs working with bomb and terrorist crews and others working with fire and police departments throughout the world.

Proceeds from my book will be split between the UK’s National Canine Defence League and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, and their counterparts all over the world. I shall market and fulfill the book online to keep costs low and all orders will be processed through ClickBank.

Using ClickBank will allow people to download my book direct to their computer desktop as soon as
the order goes through. More importantly, however, I will provide my ClickBank log in details to representatives of charities that will benefit from my work, so all can see exactly how much is earned and that everything is totally legal and true.

For myself, I’ll add a few affiliate links for pet-related products and services and dedicate the whole thing to my dogs, Beauty and Benson, both sadly departed but immortalized in my book forevermore.

The point is, I’d give my writing and research services free and ask a small charge for the book that goes directly to charity. Profiting from the book isn’t my sole concern. In fact I don’t care if I don’t make a penny from it personally, as long as animal charities benefit.

But it would be possible to earn from it should I so wish.

I could, for example, give half the proceeds to charity, keep half to myself, and add lots of affiliate links attracting profits for me. Or I could write another book and promote pre-launch copies in the back of the first, charitable, edition. I could include a resource box offering my writing services to editors of publications for animal lovers, and much more besides.

Possible Scenarios

• Offer the first chapter of the book as a free downloadable product. Add a message inviting individuals to send a money order payable to a specific charity, care of your address, in response to which you provide the url for donors to download the full version of the book or a password to open a full - locked - version provided with the sample chapter. The money then gets passed to the appropriate charities.

• Invite people to send two money orders, one payable to you, the other to a charity of their choice or yours. When money orders arrive process orders in your chosen fashion, either on or off the Internet. Bank your takings and post the rest to their intended charitable recipients.

• Allow responsible representatives to view your records without notice in order to
prove foul play is never an issue.

To Make It Easy For People To Enjoy Some Particular Experience

In this case the book normally travels free or for a token sum to cover costs. A few examples will illustrate the purpose:

• You remember Heartbeat (if you’re not in the UK, you’re missing a great TV series) where Claude Greengrass plagiarized a guide to walks over the Yorkshire Moors so guests on his rambling holidays could find their own way around, saving time and energy for him? Well that’s an example, albeit a bad one in Claude’s case, of publishing a book to help promote some other, usually profit-making purpose.

• In the 1930s to 1950s, major UK firms provided all manner of information products to help
customers enjoy their product and to hopefully buy from them in preference to rival companies. Oxo gave the famous tin container, Homepride flour gave the cute caricature set of flour men designed as flour sifters, salt and pepper cellars, and other kitchen paraphernalia. Many more firms gave books and other info products, including Stork and Bero whose recipe books are now collectors’ items, and many car makers whose motoring guides and atlases are also worth many pounds each. The idea was brilliant yet even so fell largely out of fashion and today it’s quite rare to find such valuable freebies to help customers benefit from their purchase and to poach custom from rival companies. Shame, and an idea well worth resurrecting!

Great Business Idea

Look for ways to create info products as Premium gifts for other companies to use and charge a royalty on all copies issued.

To Overcome Resistance To Buying Online

It’s a fact, in many countries people are still reluctant to place credit card orders on the Internet, despite the high security generally involved. So companies have to work harder to win sales over their bricks and mortar high street counterparts and one way to do this is to attract visitors to your web site to download something special - for free - and ultimately to sell prospects on the benefits of ordering online, particularly from you!

The main benefit of offering free info products from your web site is to establish a relationship with individuals, and ultimately turn them into buyers. People are reluctant to order from faceless companies, people they may never get to see, and aren’t even sure they exist. Once they’ve emailed you a few times, received a regular ezine from you, once they know you exist and realize you have their best interests at heart, then they’ll start buying from you in preference to high street suppliers.

Examples

These are examples of how to use free information products to attract people to your web site in preference to sourcing products elsewhere:

• You are a travel agent selling discount tickets from airline consolidators. It’s a highly
competitive business as you will see from hundreds of small ads. from competing
companies in weekend newspapers and glossy magazines. You could attract visitors to
your site by offering a free book of money off vouchers to use at their destination. To
do this, make contact with tourist offices in most popular destinations and offer to give
them a write up in your free downloadable product if they agree to let you include a
money-off voucher for your customers to use.

• You’re selling a book about how to win competitions prizes, again a highly competitive
product with dozens of sites selling much the same thing. To win business you offer a
downloadable pdf listing of current prize competitions, with closing dates and suggested
solutions for competitions first stage tasks.

• You’re selling Barbie dolls at your web site. Barbie dolls are immensely popular and
literally thousands of companies compete for sales on and off the Internet. Attract people
to your web site by offering a downloadable pdf file of knitting and sewing patterns for
dresses to fit Barbie and other dolls sold on your site.

To Sell a Particular Product For Which The Same or a Similar Product is Available from Lots of Different Sources

Obvious, really, because all you are doing is aiming for a bigger share of the market, something supermarkets achieve with their offers of loyalty points, and breakfast cereal manufacturers do with plastic toys, while McDonald’s and other fast food outlets choose figures in sets to win business and encourage repeat buying. Examples of how specific information products can increase sales of specific products and services:

• Dealer in cherished number plates - Strange and Even Stranger License Plates

• Dealer in second-hand cars - 101 Ways to Keep Your Car From Being Stolen

• Publisher of property auctions newsletter - Directory of Property Auctions in the United
Kingdom (or any other country)

• Greengrocer - 101 Wartime Recipes Using Potatoes, Carrots and Other Inexpensive
Supplies

• Carpet cleaning specialist - A Guide to Stain Removal

• Hairdressing salon - Bitter Sweet Solutions (Homemade Hair Treatments Using
Vinegar and Honey).

Note: Some info products work best at attracting new customers, others at promoting one-off high ticket items.

For example, once you had your guide to baking cakes using Bero flour or Stork margarine, that was all you needed, until next year’s edition appeared. And you only needed to buy the product once to test the recipes. At least that is the theory. In practice, both companies attracted long term buyers as consumers tested recipe after recipe using Stork or Bero, most of the time choosing those very products in preference to cheaper ingredients from less well-known, less considerate suppliers.

As for high ticket items, such as a new car or personalized number plate, a package holiday or stay in a luxury hotel, unless they are totally unique, they are probably available from numerous sources. If price, conditions and product are roughly similar across the range of suppliers, that info product might be all it takes to tempt buyers your way. A good example might be those discount tickets to spend at your destination or a book packed with interesting license plates or containing vouchers for car cleaning equipment for license plates buyers.

To Gather Names For Your Database

This is one of the main reasons a book is offered free and one of the most effective ways to build a profitable mailing list for use on and off the Internet.

The point is, many more people will request a free product than will purchase something outright from your web site or via smaller, low cost advertisements. So even if you don’t make a lot of money from your small ads., you should nonetheless receive lots of requests for free information which can then be followed up with mailings about the product you were advertising or something completely different.

The free book itself can include a sales letter for the product you were originally trying to sell, a catalogue of all your products, or an invitation to visit your web site for more details about what you offer.

To Explain How to Use Your Product and Therefore Reduce Complaints, Queries and Requests for Refund

Many complaints and requests for refund happen because the customer finds your product difficult to use. Some people buy items they are not qualified to use, such as computers and electrical goods, or for which they later discover user instructions are missing or incomplete.

Either way, you could be burdened with complaints and refund requests, at best your time will be eroded by people calling with questions that could be answered in your information product or on your web site.

Computer software is a nightmare for the seller in countries with inexperienced users such as the UK where sadly few people know much about computers and the Internet.

I’ve sold CDs of information products which are quite simple to use yet people call in their droves to ask questions such as: “Can you talk me through using my computer please as my son’s just gone to college and he’s the only one who can use it?”, “I need to download some items from the Internet. Do I have to have log onto the Internet first?”

No joking, but proving people really do, sometimes, need very basic information about using particular products or else they’ll complain, phone, and even return the product for refund.

The more you can tell your customer about using your product the less likely you’ll have problems of the kind I’ve just mentioned.

Simply To Sell

Many of my free books are simply spiced up sales letters for my products. Very often that free book is the first chapter or introduction to the full length version. This serves several purposes, mainly to give a no obligation sample of the full length title as well as to extol the benefits of buying my product and hopefully encourage a sale.

The free gift can generate sales in other ways, such as:

• You can list all your products for sale within the free info product. This can be accomplished
by including related titles at specific points throughout the text or as a separate catalogue
listing on the last few pages.

• The free info product can include affiliate links throughout the text to point readers towards
products that might interest them. For example, that book I will write about heroic dogs and
cats might be followed by Amazing Cat and Dog Tails, featuring long journeys taken by lost
pets to find their way home. In that section of the book I’ll include affiliate links for pet
identification services such as special dog collars and injected chips. Where I highlight
unusual animal behavior as a means of communicating with humans I’ll give my affiliate links
for books like How to Talk to Your Cat and Why Does My Dog Do This?

• The free info product might include questions that can only be answered in the book itself
thereby stimulating curiosity, and ultimately sales. I offered a free introduction to my book
Mags to Riches and highlighted ten easy ways to convert old newspapers into cash. But I also
wanted to sell my book from that free chapter which I did by posing the following questions
and puzzles:

- What Ken Dodd might buy from you ….. Why Charlie Chaplin can earn you a fortune
….. Discover what Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find out for himself - and how it can earn
you big money!

- What every Mr. Wright wants from you. And Mrs. Wright, too, and Mr. Jones and Mrs.
Brown.

- Where to look for something writers will pay a fortune for and how to keep them wanting
more.

- How a specific date can earn you thousands of pounds. And how the day after that can
do the same …..

- Birthdays - we all have them - how to turn everyone’s birthday into cash for you.

- What every cat lover in the world wants from you. And every dog lover too!

Unless you read the book some of those questions are likely to go unanswered forever,
hence the reason many orders resulted from pure curiosity value.

• That free info product could simply be a compilation of articles on various topics each with a
resource box promoting one or more of your products or affiliate links. Offer the book free to
editors and publishers to copy without royalty or copyright restrictions, and you could end up
selling millions of pounds worth of goods on the strength of that one book alone.

More Reasons to Give a Chapter, Introduction or Text Sample FREE

The main reason - usually to sell or make money - isn’t always in the front end of the marketing process, but sometimes in the back. So the free sample chapter or introduction is usually to generate leads for your info product (or other item). Let’s look at some other reasons.

• To test your idea for a new information product before spending days, weeks, months creating something nobody wants to buy. If few people request the freebie, your product is almost certainly a no-goer, similarly if the freebie is popular but results in few or no paid-for orders.

• The sample chapter can be a selling tool not only for its own full length paid-for version, but for other products too, where for example a list or catalogue of additional products is included with the giveaway item. For instance, the first chapter of The Way to a Man’s Heart: Cooking with Known Aphrodisiacs might generate interest in the paid-for version of the book and might additionally direct readers to web sites offering related info products, such as 1001 Ways to Be Romantic, How to Find the Man of Your Dreams, and so on. It pays to be careful, however, when including links for other people’s products, and ensure they do not detract from the real reason the sample chapter was given, namely to sell that cookery book. As for all things in mail order, direct mail, online marketing, you must test response to all your promotions.

• The first chapter can represent a ‘suck it and see’ guarantee to a product delivered in installments, such as correspondence courses, resell rights packages, and so on. If Chapter One or Module One isn’t as expected, readers can cancel their standing order or request a refund of money already paid.

• Sample chapters can be articles you’ve written for payment elsewhere, where copyright is yours, and the article or series of articles is expanded to book or course format. A popular article is its own proof of a likely best selling book and you’ve probably completed most of the research already, and been paid for it.

• You could give the sample chapter with the full version of the product which is password protected. Readers who enjoy the test version and decide to go full length simply give credit card details through such as ClickBank and move to a thank you page which provides the password for the full book already in their possession. (Knowing the full length book is sitting there, tying up space on their desktop, just screaming out to be opened and read, is all the incentive most people need to get that password fast!)

• You could write an article based on your full length info product, but leave the reader dangling somewhere between casting the article to one side and buying your book. Ways to do this:

- Leave questions in your article which are answered in the full length title. Make readers curious, give cryptic clues, leave the most vital information for Part Two – the paid-for product!

- Offer articles to editors and publishers of print and online publications and end with questions that are answered at your web site where readers can buy books related to the subject of the article.

- Get readers to subscribe to your ezine where you’ll answer those niggling
questions and in autoresponder follow ups you’ll promote your main book to the very limit of temptation!

• The free sample gives credibility in you and your writing ability. People know the book has - probably - already been written, and is of similar quality to what they’ve already sampled. If they have money and they like your work, they’ll buy. Probably!

• The sample chapter can include a contents listing for the full length version, where readers can check length (yes some people still believe quantity outshines quality) and you can induce sales with tempting chapter titles and snippets. It’s a good idea to give the page numbers on which certain highlighted features occur, especially where pages run into triple figures (again, never mind the quality, feel the width), and chapter headings are themselves deliciously vague. Like this:

Here’s a sneak preview of 1001 Easy Ways to Get Rich Overnight!

- How to live in a luxury home without having a mortgage and never having to pay a penny rent (Chapter Twenty Four, Page 201)

- The four letter word that gets you everything you want out of life, and more! (Chapter Twenty Five, Page 273)

- How to get a brand new car and drive it away without having to pay! (Chapter Twenty Six, Page 307)

- Four words that guarantee you free travel for the rest of your life! (Chapter Twenty Nine, Page 406)

• People will retain your sample chapter far longer than they will normally keep a sales letter, especially of the printed variety or on a web site with a domain name they’ll soon forget. So although the majority of people will buy the full length product quite soon after receiving the freebie, you might still get a steady trickle of sales later when busy people find time to read your sample chapter.

Never forget the most common reason of all is to tempt readers of the free infoproduct to click on the link on the very last page where they find your order form and BUY YOUR BOOK!

To Use The Same Advert To Sell Dozens of Different Products

Selling dozens of different titles through hundreds of unrelated magazines, to millions of people whose interests differ wildly, is no easy task. To make it easier, you could create a catalogue for all of your products which you can send to everyone answering the exact same advertisement in hundreds of different media.

That catalogue is your free info product and details all of your products for recipients to browse and find items that interest them.

That same catalogue can be sent to enquirers to countless different advertisements or the advertisement itself can be adapted to suit different people with different needs and interests.

Melvin Powers (How to Get Rich In Mail Order), for example, tells how his simple advertisement appears all over the world in response to which he sends a catalogue featuring all of his titles. Usually only the headline varies, the body copy remains the same.

Here is an example of an advertisement for a catalogue listing hundreds of books about making money from home to interest people with specific interests, such as writing, working with computer, and so on. Notice how only the headline varies, meaning the same advertisement and catalogue can be used in all your promotions and appear in countless different magazines read by many, many people having very different needs and desires.

WRITERS

Send for our catalogue of money-making opportunities

COMPUTER USERS

Send for our catalogue of money-making opportunities

HORSE LOVERS

Send for our catalogue of money-making opportunities

STUDENTS

Send for our catalogue of money-making opportunities.

For Writers, Computer Users, Horse Lovers and Students, also read SALES PROFESSIONALS, FARMERS, GRAPHOLOGISTS, POSTCARD COLLECTORS, STAY AT HOME MUMS AND DADS, etc., etc., etc. In fact, as many groups as you have titles to satisfy.

To Solicit Testimonials

When you’ve just created a product you’re unlikely to have testimonials to place on your web site or sales letter to induce credibility and generate buyer confidence. Testimonials are highly effective at increasing confidence especially online where a link can be placed between your site and that of the person providing the testimonial, proving that person really exists, which is always doubtful - in readers’ minds at any rate!

You can gather testimonials by offering books free to a small group of people or for a specified time in exchange for them completing a questionnaire about your product.

Provide the questionnaire with the product and offer another small gift to ensure questionnaires are returned on time. Be fair, ask people to give good and unfavorable comments about your product and don’t penalize them for giving answers you don’t want to hear. Don’t be upset by unfavorable comments, we all get them, and once you’re over the disappointment, those comments can reveal deficiencies in your product which can be corrected and lead to even higher sales and far fewer refund requests.

To Help Others Sell Your Product

Many free information products are simply guides to helping others sell your books either as resellers keeping one hundred per cent of the takings or affiliates earning a stipulated share.

It may seem strange to help others sell more of your products when they keep the entire proceeds but this can be what prompts them to buy in the first place. I’ve purchased resell rights to products by Yanik Silver, Corey Rudl and Allan Wilson on the strength of the excellent reseller guides they provide.

So, if you’re selling resell rights titles, consider compiling a free book of tips for marketing your product as well as ready-to-go web sites, advertisements and book reviews for marketing your book on and off the Internet.

Anyone seeking affiliates to market their products really should provide advertisements, web sites and marketing guides to encourage sales for agents, and ultimately profits for writers and publishers, too.