Should You Give Away Ebooks Or Charge For Them?
I saw another Reddit thread:
Look at this poor confused guy. He’s obviously been reading the average internet marketing blog which is all about freebies, lead magnets, and how somehow you tie it all up together in a way they never mention, and this somehow leads to megamillions in your bank account.
Let me clarify this here.
Is it better to give away some ebooks to grow your subscriber list or charge for them?
This is not even the right question in any situation, because if you’re asking that question, you’ve skipped a few steps.
First point: There’s always a funnel. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using Instagram, an email list or a website, if it’s a professional enterprise you’re taking a visitor along this train-ride:
Uninterested in your product>interested in your product>a follower of yours>Giving you MONEY.
Now, before you ask the above – wrong – question, ask yourself these right ones:
- How is your project making money?
- What purpose does your email list serve?
- What exactly is your business model here?
If you answer those questions, you’ll have your answer.
If your end goal is to have people give you money and the only product you have is a book, then it’d be stupid to give that away.
Meanwhile, if you’re offering some service, an ebook is just a credibility thing.
Are you planning to use your email list as a driver of sales for a service? Because ultimately a free sign up to get someone on your mailing list is useless if you don’t have a follow up responder and/or you’re pointing them to an offer which pays you.
All of those questions and thoughts will point you in the right direction.
As for what material to put into an ebook for either a giveaway or sale, I’ll give you all my personal formula for deciding this.
Here’s My Formula
This is the blueprint I use when deciding whether to give stuff away or charge for it. Now, the odd blackhatter or lifestyle-guru-hack will probably hate this advice, because it’s honest, authentic … and it actually works.
Basically, we prime our giveaways so they relate to our main product as discussed in this article from a while back.
Then here’s the key determinant:
Is the information based entirely on stuff that you can’t find elsewhere?
Providing your material is good, you always add value by creating a product. That’s not debatable – especially when it’s free material. When somebody gives you grief about a free product, whether that’s “oh this could be longer” or “you misspelled a word on page 14” or “I really wish this was in .epub format and not .pdf,” simply remind them that the material they’re reading didn’t come from the magic “create a book” tree and you didn’t just find it lying on the ground waiting to be uploaded to the net.
With that said, let’s go back to the question. Free or not free?
If you have collated the information from publicly available sources or summarised a lot of information into easily consumable material, that’s a value ad but people can get the insight elsewhere. You’ve added value by making it simple and easy. Give it away and use it for subscriber gains (but don’t take forever creating it.)
Now, if you have unique information that comes from insight, research and blood, sweat or tears, then you must charge for it. If you don’t, then a) nobody will value your work and b) you will have paid for something with your time and received zero return on that investment.
That’s the formula in a nutshell.
Why Internet Marketing Advice Doesn’t Work
Here’s a reply from that thread:
Now, no offence to the guy who is replying… but this is terrible advice.
Why? because it does the opposite of what I did above. It takes the idea of creating a funnel which takes the reader through building interest and desire though to wanting to pay for premium content…. And throws it away in favour of something I can’t quite tell.
Look, there’s no point in giving away premium information for free, out in the open, to anyone who wants it.
Even if you create the best material in the world, who cares? You’ve completely devalued it. If you post your best material on a blog for free, nobody has any incentive to ever give you a penny. They don’t even have to give you their email address!
Even if they did, there’s no point in you having it because you haven’t got anything to sell to them anyway.
Becoming an “international authority” is worth less than zero if you give all of your best material away and spend years of your life creating it. That’s why the post reads like someone who took their advice from a $10 ebook or something and hasn’t ever done anything with the aim of actually making money.
Final Thoughts
The above section turned into a bit of a rant, so let’s recap with what I’ve actually tried to get at:
- Everyone and everything involved in online marketing is part of a sales funnel or set of them
- Your funnel needs to send people towards a sale
- There’s no point in giving away premium content for free
- Generally, the more “premium” and “unique” your content, the further down the funnel it needs to be
- If you have easily available information and you’re just putting a spin on it, it’s an ideal lead magnet
- If your material is unique or otherwise impossible for people to get elsewhere, then sell it
- Don’t chase being an authority at the expense of getting paid for your work
- Don’t listen to random internet dudes because they’re probably just regurgitating some guy on YouTube or whatever
With that said, I realise that I am just a random internet guy, so I’ll leave it all there. Feel free to follow the above advice or ignore it, but test it to see if it’s accurate and whether it helps.
Remember though, if your actions aren’t leading towards you becoming more profitable (or even making money in the first place) when that’s your goal, you need new actions and a new game plan.
As always, questions, insights and additions are welcome.
See you next time.