One of my belief’s has been that with digital information you can make more money from it by allowing it to be shared. I’ve been saying pretty much the same thing since 1986 when I first discovered shareware.
Mike Masnick at TechDirt says that as soon as you digitize something it becomes infinitely available (reproducible). I agree. Rather than fighting against the current and trying to hide it, why not go with the flow and allow your stuff to be shared.
Why on earth would you hide your work from your fans?
So, how do you find a way to make money using that (free) as a business model?
There is no better way to have your work viewed by a potentially huge audience. If you can promote this in other avenues, so much the better. Good word of mouth is the best sales tool that there is.
I always try to keep things where I can control them so I would start with my own website. Anyone can easily sell from their site these days. Digital downloads, cd’s, tee shirts, or pretty much anything. Many of the physical products can be dropped shipped.
I also believe many of your fans will still pay for something even though they can get it for free. There are many others who will pay because they got it for free and liked it. You just have give them an easy to do it and ask.
Here’s one way that you could do it. Put your files in a zip file along with a readme file. I would suggest html, but plain text is OK.
I would write…
We (name) expressly allow you to share this (song, movie, book) as long as you include this page.
If you liked it or even if you didn’t send please send it on to a couple of friends and see what they think.
Please visit our site (link to site)
or
If you’re inclined, send us a buck (PayPal donate button)
Thanks for helping us.
Cheers,
(signature)
Wade Richards is my customer. Have a look at his site.
He’s a musician using wordpress tools to promote his business and doing a good job of it.
I saw a Craigslist ad that said
Email Blast
I hate those words (and in the headline)
You need to be listening to your customers, not shouting at them.
- Is your email list opt-in only?
- Do your customers even know who you are?
- Can they speak to you?
Instead, be social. It’s easy to open an account at Twitter, facebook or LinkedIn.
You can speak your mind, but be sure to listen to what’s being said by others.
Forget about BLASTING!
Here’s more from the Search Engine Guide,
I don’t go crazy following people on Twitter, just stuff that really interests me. I get most of my news first on Twitter.
I look at new followers. There are many who just follow millions of people just to get followers back.
I don’t feel any obligation to automatically follow back and I block the spammy people. Especially ones without any tweets.
Most of my customers are small businesses and just about every one asks me how to get lots of free traffic from the search engines.
I wish I had a magic formula that would get top ranking for the keyword of your choice, but alas there is no such thing. It can take a huge amount of work. It can be a full time job just monitoring your results and my customers don’t have the time or resources for that.
My advice pretty much always has been the same.
You get search engine traffic from inbound links that come from other good quality sites.
You get good inbound links from having content that people want to link to.
Lesson = write your content to appeal to your human visitor.
Here’s a good new post from Google about optimizing your site.
One of your best promotional tools is your personal email. If you don’t overdo it your sig file can be a real help to your business. It’s free, could get passed around and after it’s set up it takes no extra work at all.
A while ago I got an email from someone who is in the promotion business. Their sig file was one picture. You couldn’t copy and paste the name, click on the website address (or phone number if you are on a smartphone) because the picture wasn’t linked to anything.
You want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to contact you and see your promotions. Use plain text and inline CSS in your sig file copy and links and don’t assume that the person reading it is on a computer.
Send an email to your computer or better yet to your cell phone and try to see the things that you are promoting.
I got an polite email request from someone who is selling an icon pack. They wanted me to promote their site.
I have a previous post about icons and if you know me, you know that I’m all about good free stuff. So I found this…
Making money with a web based information business these days is much different than doing business used to be. There used to be many distribution costs associated with doing business with information as your product, printing, storing, shipping. Not anymore. Your product can now be delivered to the end user for almost nothing. It also means that it is now infinitely available and can be shared for nothing.
I believe that the way to go with this is to embrace the sharing. There are plenty of ways to make money once you’re popular. The trick is how do you get to be popular? I believe the way to do that is by letting people see what you have to offer them without any obligations. Then once you are popular it’s up to you to figure out how to monetize it. If you have really made fans they may help you figure it out, but in the end it’s up to you.
There’s a good post on TechDirt today which is mostly one of the comments on their blog. Imagine that! A fan offering a website some great free content just because they like them. They talk mostly about music, but this can be about many other businesses. Just read the post and substitute “music/musician” with writer, programmer, filmmaker, etc. I’m sure that there are plenty more.
I’ve been saying for a long time that optimizing your site for search engines is pretty simple. I was reading a post today by Mike Moran called Search Marketing Is Easier Than You Think.
Many people confuse SEO (getting found by search engines) and SEM (marketing through search engines). It’s true that you can’t market via search engines unless they know where you are and what you have, but if your site is search friendly there are also some easy steps that you can take to make sure that your site is a valuable one for your visitors.
I saw a post on LinkedIn today by Mike Clough called Top 10 Advertising Tips For Small Business. I was interested in the title so I went to the site and read the article. I liked what he had to say, but for me the #1 promotion is to give something away for free.
Information is the perfect product for this. Write an ebook (you could even buy one) about your business and give it away. It costs you almost nothing.
Mike also says *Have an effective website*. I couldn’t agree more. Simple, but still effective.
The other tips are pretty good, too.
