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The best way to sell your ideas is to give them away creatively

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Question sent to me recently:  “A friend asked me how I thought he should sell his new ebook.  What advice would you give him?”

My reply:

I’ve sold nearly 100,000 copies of various information products and ebooks over the last several years so I’m a good guy to ask I suppose.  The secret to success selling ANY information comes down to two concepts in my opinion. First, learn the power of “free” and next learn to find and partner with INFLUENCERS.

For the sake of clarity, an ebook in this article is a simple download file that is most often a PDF file – easily read on any PC, Mac or reading device. I’m not talking about a book that requires an electronic book reader, although there’s no reason you can’t include any books or other information products in this discussion.

While doing all this BE SURE TO GROW YOUR OWN MAILING LIST.

Let’s start with “FREE”:

To leverage the power of free you need to GIVE AWAY whatever you are used to charging money for. Ideally

Wisdom from the mountain top guru: "If you can't find a way to GIVE IT AWAY then you'll never sell it fool!"

this is an information product, video, audio etc. so that the value (both real and perceived) is high, and the costs are low.  If you don’t have a high value, free informational product to give away yet then you need to be convinced that this is the way to go. This video might help convince you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df9RRvGAzOI

If you aren’t convinced of the power of “free”, and you aren’t willing to “give away” HIGH VALUE information, then stop here. My advice is useless for you from here forward.

You need to come to the realization that a single book, or info product SHOULD NOT be the end goal or you will struggle to succeed. The end goal is to grow your audience and become influential in the arena of your expertise. More books, products, influence and success will come with time. Success comes in streams when you are a writer. It’s not a sudden gift overnight for 99.999% of us.

The next obvious question:

Once you have a valuable freebie to give away, who can you give it to? Who wants it?

Enter the INFLUENCERS.

An “Influencer” is someone that has the attention of the audience you’d like to reach. It could be a blog, a website, a twitter guru, a magazine editor,  or better yet someone with a large email list of eager, loyal readers.

How to find and partner with an “Influencer”:

A bit of research on Google, facebook and twitter for top sites and experts in your niche that also gather email addresses is your best first bet on finding the influential in your niche.  They aren’t hiding.  NOTE: If you have a hard time finding the influential websites and leaders in your niche then there’s a good chance you are facing a BIG UPHILL climb in establishing yourself in this “new market”.  In other words, “no audience” = “no book sales”.

When selling ANY ebook the BEST place to start is by finding partners that have the attention of your target audience – ideally with a BUNCH of email addresses. Find win/win/win ways to partner with them and you’ll do very well.  If you take my advice from day one you SHOULDN’T EVEN WRITE A BOOK OR A COURSE UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE FOUND AND CAME TO AGREEMENT WITH YOUR KEY INFLUENCERS!

In other words, don’t start with the product, start with the audience building.

some examples:

  • Have your influential partner offer 3 free chapters of your book to their email mailing list and tag the “free report” with an affiliate link for the rest of the book. The affiliate link ensures that your partner/influencer gets credit for sales made.
  • Put up a banner ad on the influencers site with a link to your book – tagged with a 50% or more affiliate link of course.
  • Interview your influential partner, or have them interview you, package it for them (clean up the mp3, put a cool play button on it etc.) and GIVE it to the in exchange for their time. Ask that they post it as content on their site.
  • Put the influential persons name ON THE COVER as co-author and tell them to give it away for free, or better yet, sell it as great content for their list and on their site. In the book tastefully encourage readers to join your mailing list.

    • Get the idea? The possibilities are endless, but it all starts with FINDING THE INFLUENCERS that have the attention of your audience.

    Some good follow up reading:
    You don’t need a website, you need an audience
    Email Marketing, The Only “techie” skill you’ll ever need

    I love getting feedback! Please leave a comment above by clicking the comment button at the top of this article.

    Comments

    1. Jim,
      outstanding advice. A similar question was asked of another extremely well-known internet marketer recently. I must say, your point by point specifics and follow up reading recommendations are much more in-depth.

      Thank you for always being so willing to share.

    2. Jim,
      You are so RIGHT! I have to admit I have been doing it all wrong since I first started selling on eBay.

      I have been selling productivity and other software on and off eBay for years and never implemented a list building effort. Boy, I was sure dumb. Now that I have sold to 1,100 customers and missed opportunities for the 30,000+ visitors that my view my auctions each year I finally understand. I NEED A LIST.

      I am fully committed to FREE though and am trying to think of which one of my products is the best to give away.

      I have several products ready to go and several more in the works. Several of these products would most certainly benefit your reader community.

      I certainly wish I would have seen this article several years ago.

    3. Hi Jim,

      Great advise as always. Giving stuff away is so hard for a lot of people – I have worked with partners and clients who simply couldn’t get this, and suffered as a result.

      I had one client who simply refused to give away a few days of free access to his service to show people how good it was (it was great – I told him people would be addicted to the results if they could just try it!). It took him years to finally set up a free trial account for people to take the service for a test drive, and his business boomed as a result.

      Cheers

      Rocky

    4. Jim, you are absolutely right. People love getting something for free. Sometimes as business people it is hard to get this in our thick heads, but once we do, it opens a whole new world. That is both online and brick and mortar stores too. Keep up the good work and thanks for all of your help over the years.

      Dane Laster

    5. Great, crystal clear advice as always, Jim. People are more likely to buy from you if they know, like and trust you. So don’t bother trying to sell to strangers. Give stuff away for free to strangers. Once they’ve seen how good your free stuff is they are no longer strangers and now they know, like and trust you and so will be more likely to buy from you.

    6. Dear Jim
      I FINALLY found someone who makes sense!
      All people think is put up a website and you will make a FORTUNE. Your common sense approach is a breath of fresh air.
      Thank you for telling it like it is.
      Mark

    7. Jim, this is fantastic information! I managed to grow a following online in the past four years and have been approached by a few people that wanted to market to my people. Now I know how to best include their products for my community. Thank you.