There are some blogs with over 1 million words of quality content. There are also some people who have uploaded thousands of minutes of videos on YouTube. Free information has become more accessible than ever, but some people wonder if offering valuable information for free is a good thing. Some people believe that they should provide decent information for free and then provide the valuable information in their paid products.
However, it is more important than ever for us to give our readers valuable information for free. There are numerous blogs that already give quality information for free. These blogs have set the standards for their niche. If bloggers are not able to deliver as much valuable information for free as the top blogs do, then those bloggers will not be able to keep up.
The most visited blog posts in your niche are the ones that provide the most value. Most of the blog posts on Google’s first page have well over 1,000 words of content. These blog posts also have good pictures that further support the main point of that blog post. The reason the most valuable blog posts get visited the most is because people are looking for value, not for something that anyone could have written. It sounds so simple, but it was worth mentioning.
When it comes to your paid products, people see your paid products as products that are slightly better than your free content. If your free content is really bad, then your potential customers will only think that your paid product is slightly better. In this case, slightly better is not good enough to get the sale. Even if your product goes well beyond expectations and is much better than the free content you provide, your potential customers will only believe that your products are only slightly better than your free content.
If your free content provides value to the reader, then that reader will be more likely to buy your product. In this case, your slightly better product translates to the potential customer as something that is an incredible necessity. Some people can’t even imagine you writing better content than you are already writing, but your products tell people that there is better content of yours available–at a price. In this case, unselfishly giving away a lot of valuable information leads to more sales for the products that you already have.
Some of the valuable information you have can be given out for free, but only if people give you their email addresses. By offering a free prize that people will love, you will get more blog subscribers. Even if it takes you an entire hour to come up with your free prize, hundreds and eventually thousands of people will thank you for offering that free prize. The people who receive your free prize will be more likely to buy your products and eventually become returning customers.
In addition to getting more sales, there is another benefit of unselfishly giving people valuable content for free. Offering valuable content for free will allow you to establish a presence on the web and get more traffic. Creating a blog where you give people valuable content allows you to give yourself a home on the web. Giving yourself a home on the web is one of the most important way to build long-lasting connections with potential customers who may end up buying one of your products (and come back for more).
Getting more traffic will allow you to become more popular, and as you optimize your blog, you will also be able to turn more of that traffic into sales. You can’t make more money unless people know about you, and offering valuable content for free is a great way to get more people to know about you. Some free content is so valuable that it has gone viral. It seems as if any free eBook Seth Godin writes goes viral. That’s because they are filled with free, valuable content that everyone in the marketing niche wants.
You may be thinking of ways to shorten your blog posts so you are not giving everything away. You may decide to only mention five tips instead of ten tips not because you only know five tips, but because you don’t want everyone else to know about the other five. Chances are someone already wrote a blog post similar to yours, and your tip that you think is a secret is really on someone’s blog post. People either think of ideas and strategies similar to yours or what you think is a secret about your niche is something that is well-known throughout your niche.
And now the big question comes up. Do you give everything away on your blog? Do you tell someone everything that you know about your niche? The answer is to tell people 80% of what you know about your niche. You can tell someone that much information about your niche for free and still make a lot of sales. The reason is that although the content on a blog is very focused, the content in a book or a training course is super focused. There are multiple topics that I write about on this blog. I touch upon social media, blogging, productivity, business, marketing, motivation, and a few other things as well. However, books and training courses are super focused on one of those topics and give you a strategy and order to implement everything.
If you are on the right pace towards becoming successful in your niche, then you are learning new things about your niche every day you can. That way, the definition of giving away everything changes every day. Everything becomes more as the days go by. You will have more valuable information to share with everyone, and that will only make the products you sell look a lot better.
The last big issue people have is that potential customers may look at your blog posts instead of buying your products. That’s exactly what you want the customer to do…and think that they are doing. As the potential customer visits your blog more often and sees your products on the sidebar, that customer will be gradually tempted each time they visit your blog to buy your products. I have said this numerous times, but it’s worth mentioning yet again that trust is built by being seen frequently. Your trust your best friend more than an acquaintance simply because you have seen one person more than the other. As potential customers stay on your blog for a longer period of time, they will finally decide that although your blog is incredible, the product must be more incredible. In order for you to make a lot of sales even though you are giving away valuable information for free, your product needs to be organized and represent an idea in a powerful way. That is how you will be able to nail the sale even when people can go on your blog to learn more about their niche.
In conclusion, unselfishly giving away valuable information for free is critical towards success. Chances are before you became successful in your niche, you read several articles on the web that contained valuable information. In fact, you still probably do that, and if you are not successful in your niche yet, reading articles with valuable information about your niche is a good starting point. Most people believe that a paid product is better than something for free. You get more features on a membership site if you give the owner of that membership site more money every month. HootSuite is a great, free tool, but when you use the paid version, you get more features. Paid products are associated as upgraded versions of what is already free. By providing free, valuable content for your readers, those readers will associate your paid products as enhancements of something that is already good.
