The Power and Importance of “Free”

A tech­nique for build­ing the read­er­ship on my blogs that I have started work­ing at is the power of releas­ing things for free. I have been prepar­ing many things over the past weeks to start releas­ing on my blogs, in hopes of build­ing a stronger and more loyal community.

Of course, the key­word in that first para­graph, the most impor­tant word in that short sum­mary is the word “free.” I have dis­cussed this before here about doing more work than you will be rewarded for, is just one of those great perks of doing a freebie!

Sure, “free” has a lot of ben­e­fits to a blog. You can get oodles of traf­fic (did I just say oodles?), RSS sub­scribers, newslet­ter signups, and much more buzz around your blog.

Using “Free” to Build a Blog

As I said, “free” is the way to go to kick start any blog, new or old. You can go from no traf­fic to hun­dreds, even thou­sands of vis­i­tors if you play your cards right and release the right stuff.

But to be hon­est with you, peo­ple are lazy. Why should they have to do some­thing for them­selves when it’s already done for them free? You can release crap, and peo­ple will still go crazy over it because, well — it’s FREE. Not to say you should go around releas­ing garbage, though.

Traf­fic Effects

Like I said, free stuff can make your blog go nuts. Maybe it goes viral on Twit­ter, or gets stum­bled enough to bring in a crazy flow of stum­blers to your blog. What­ever it is, there is some­thing you should know about this traffic.

It may not be the ideal traf­fic you want.

Sure, any pub­lic­ity is good pub­lic­ity, but is any traf­fic good traf­fic? The thing with free­bies is that the traf­fic it can bring in will die over time. You will always have some peo­ple who stick around onto your blog because they like what you have to offer on your blog. But, there will also be the ones who only come around for the free things and leave.

Take Olivia who has just recently has a guest post on ProBlog­ger about give­aways. She had a give­away on her blog that had some dif­fer­ent effects on her traf­fic sta­tis­tics. This is a quote from her post about the changes in her RSS count:

Any­time you’re doing a give­away, you’re going to get more traf­fic, fol­low­ers, sub­scribers etc, but when the give­away is over some of them are inevitably going to drop you like third period French. For­tu­nately, there will still be some entrants who saw enough value in your blog to stick around. The day my give­away ended, I had 6x the RSS sub­scribers and fol­low­ers on Twit­ter than what I had started with. Within a few days though, 10% of them unsubscribed/unfollowed – which to me was an accept­able attri­tion rate and I was stoked to see that I was cre­at­ing enough value after the give­away for the 90% of my new “friends” who stayed.

What “Free” Isn’t

Free is a lot of things for you. It can start some­thing amaz­ing within your blog, and even rein­force what you already have going for you. But, some peo­ple don’t know the real value of what “free” actu­ally is.

Here are a few things that you should know if you want to release some­thing for free on your blog.

1. Not Sup­ported

If you release some­thing like a theme, or plu­gin, then you need to sup­port it! Treat peo­ple who down­load your prod­ucts like your blog read­ers, as some­one you are always try­ing to help. You help peo­ple my writ­ing arti­cles all of the time right? So it shouldn’t phase you much to take a moment to write an email help­ing some­one with something.

Take my other blog Asnio for exam­ple. I released a footer code snip­pet for a 3 col­umn, beau­ti­ful wid­getized footer. On some blogs it causes funky errors, and I reply to emails from these peo­ple and help them. I encour­age them to do so, and as a result, I bet­ter my reputation.

2. Some­thing you don’t use

They say this for affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing: “If you don’t use it, don’t endorse it.” I really believe this logic applies to free stuff. Usu­ally the free­bies I release are code snip­pets that I pull off my blog. Every­one sees them, and I get plenty of requests for them. Here are a few examples:

• Asnio Footer Mod
• Archives Mod
• Code Snip­pets from the Blo­gus­sion theme
3. Not Pre­mium Quality

It’s true, things you release for free on your blog should all be pre­mium qual­ity, which means peo­ple would pay for them, but you’re such a nice per­son you aren’t charg­ing any­thing. Take ebooks for exam­ple — dozens and dozens of pages reveal­ing secrets to mak­ing $40,000 a month blog­ging are out there for free (cour­tesy of Mr. John Chow). Can you imag­ine how much he would have made off one of his ebooks? Instead of hav­ing a prod­uct, he gave it for free to strengthen his community.

4. It’s not updated

Free things can be updated. Free themes, hell, even ebooks! This one is really only tar­geted at themes and plu­g­ins you release. Some of these things you release on your blog can be very vital to one per­son. If it’s not updated for them, then they won’t be able to keep using it if some­thing breaks when the update their CMS. Here’s a lit­tle sce­nario for you:

You release an amaz­ing theme on your blog that gets 1,000 hits a day and 3,000 down­loads for three months on your blog. Word­Press 2.9 comes out, and your theme breaks. You have got­ten all of this traf­fic from releas­ing the 2.8 com­pat­i­ble ver­sion, so imag­ine if all these peo­ple came back to your blog for the updated ver­sion.

“Free” is your future

Think of your blog months, or a year or two into the future if you keep releas­ing free things. Your blog can be huge, and have a large audi­ence because you gave for free, did more work than you’d be rewarded for, and you fol­low some of the tips posted here today.

What do you think free will turn into over time? It’s a nice word, every­one loves to hear it — money.

You will have the audi­ence on your blog to start all kinds of mon­e­ti­za­tion tech­niques. Pre­mium prod­ucts, affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing, maybe a few of those dreaded ban­ner ads.

What does “free” tell you?

Have you looked into this “free” thing yet? If you have, what was your expe­ri­ence with being free? Is the effort you put out for it worth it, or would you rather build your com­mu­nity a dif­fer­ent way? What­ever it is, let’s chat about it in the comments!

Photo by Kar­rie Amelia

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