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.
- Not Supported
- Something you don’t use
- Not Premium Quality
- It’s not updated
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.
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:
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.
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!
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I think you’re on to something, Alex! I’ve seen Giveaways popping up all over the Internet, and they’ve been very successful. But without an impressive, good-looking, well-organized website, you’re right, they’re only good for getting lots of traffic that will never visit again.
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. When I was originally planning out my site, I was going to monetize it with reviews of sites and products that I use, much like you started to do. But I’ve realized that free giveaways are the way to go.
I haven’t tried this, but I imagine you can charge companies to give away their products for free on your site. Since it’s a giveaway, it’ll naturally drive traffic to your site and an article that promotes their company. It’ll be awhile before I can do something like this, but you should be able to with this site.
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..Lawn Mowing Guide Sales Report: JJ Entry #24
I have been thinking about giving away too, and that’s why I wrote this post. Maybe this post is a hint at something?
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Alex, congratulations on the 101 article.
FREE is crucial. Move the free line! Always move it as far as you can.
Great post,
Igor
Igor Helps You Succeed´s last blog ..Answer These Three Questions To Increase Your Revenue
Thanks Igor, it’s a big accomplishment for me!
I think one of the most important parts you mentioned is offering premium quality. It doesn’t have to be the single best work of your life, but I would really point out that you shouldn’t just put something together over night that doesn’t really add any value just because its free.
Even if you are something monetarily free, then you still are requiring my time which is valuable to me. So I’m going to be really upset if you give me something that wasted 10+ minutes of my time even if it was free
Inspirational Words by Stephen´s last blog ..Inspirational True Stories: A Carnival of Links (vol 1)
It’s almost hard sometimes to give something away rather then having it be paid for. But, it’s important to your community that you make these kind of sacrifices!
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Excellent article. I should probably also consider to begin offering something free to those who subscribe to my mailinglist… except, I don’t have a mailinglist yet
Are you giving away some free stuff here on blogussion? Nothing seemed to jump at my eyes.
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Interview With World Famous Problogger Darren Rowse (video)
It’s in the works! We have some very exciting new things coming out shortly.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Yes I agree. When you give away something for free people will continue to come back to your website or visit it everyday to see new things. This is one of the best ways to get exposure in a good way.
Marcell´s last blog ..PSD to Wordpress Series Part 1
And if you update something you gave away, then they will want to have the updated version – thus creating the same traffic volume over again.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
Giving something free is good idea to keep your readers happy. However, as well as providing something for no charge, you’ve got to keep producing what you originally promised to delivered. Otherwise, the readers will only come for free stuff. And I am sure it is not possible to provide free stuff in daily basis.
InternetHow Blog´s last blog ..How a simple taxi ride made me earn £110 per week?
You are exactly right! Giveaways are great ways to get traffic, encourage participation (like sign-ups) and build a solid reputation. What will make you successful though comes from what you do on your blog every day.
I dunno, maybe you guys will see some free stuff soon?
Excellent point! It’s important to know that giving out free stuff is a great way to draw traffic to your blog, but it’s the content you write that keeps the visitors there.
Alex´s last blog ..Young Blogger Interviews #2: Liane from Better Blogging for Bloggers
This is a Great Post!!! I was considering doing a Free Giveaway in return for opt-in email.
Thanks!
Son Koral
Son´s last blog ..How do I SEO my Blog?
Free makes the world go round. Especially in this economy.
Dr Cyberspace´s last blog ..Facebook Buys FriendFeed
Oh, and btw, the doggie is adorable
SY
hospitalera´s last blog ..404 custom error page for Wordpress
I’ve done giveaways in the past on a personal website/forum of mine, and I’ve seen some success with it, although most people did just signup for the contest, and then never came back to the forum, basically just one time posters. But the important thing is… I got them to know about the website, which for me the awareness of the website is more important, because that was my goal. I did get some very loyal forum followers afterwords, and that was what really helped my website aton.
Till then,
Jean
From an ecommerce standpoint, its very hard to turn someone who came to your site looking for something free into a paying customer.
Another great article.
Free things are really a good card to play to gain readers, suscribers and tweeter followers, but if you don´t have good enough content to keep them around, then it won´t matter, they´ll gonna leave as soon as the free stuff is over.