The art of the freebie
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Offering a freebie will catch the attention of many, especially if what you offer is
b) there is no other catch associated with it.
I saw that in action during lunch today. Here is what happened:
The Prolific Oven serves varieties of pastries and other bakery items along with a range of sandwiches. The sandwich was great. There was also an interesting twist. Every sandwich plate had a small piece of the one of the pastries from the bakery. During the 90 minutes I was there, I observed that at least three people ordered pastries to go after they had their lunch. The sampling really worked.
This is not the only place where the concept works.
Taking inspiration from Seth, I made my eBook “Personal Branding for Technology Professionals” available for free. 97,000 copies were downloaded. Izumoto Takashi from Japan even got a Japanese version created. It may seem like there was no ROI from these eBooks as they were distributed for free. Not true. Just the sheer reach and the number of friendships that developed because of this will make it all worth it.
Having founded an open source solutions company CIGNEX in late 2000, I saw this model work for many open source companies.
You can see that technique in use in many companies that offer free trials.
Question therefore is: What can your business do to take advantage of this?
Something to think about.
Rajesh,
I sent Seth a page from my almost ready to make public book. I wrote about his Purple Cow experience and how it fit Everett Rogers’ adoption profile. The next day he posts a repeat of the Purple Cow adventure. A few days later he puts up his “cast your bread upon the water” speech. He did respond as well but it is nice to see I may have gotten his attention.
I have been contemplating the “free ebook idea” very seriously. The thing that holds me back is that he, and you in your example, have a bit of a launching pad that many (most?) other do not have.
I am trying to contact some of the people who have posted books on Scribd to see if they saw any value from their test. I have spoken to other authors who make their ebooks available and they have had positive experiences but provided no numbers. In any case, the book has to be fairly good to get any traction and that is hard to calculate into the equation. With Seth, and you, there is an audience that has experienced your passion and voice. Which made me think that I just need to find a way for people to hear my voice and passion and perhaps I too can have 100K copies of my book in play! Then the question of how many hard copy sales and speaking engagements can be expected will be answered
I would appreciate your comments when you have time.
Thanks for sharing your story and for the great blog!