People love free stuff and there’s a huge online industry built on the internet user’s desire to win something or get something for nothing. Use the giveaway or contest to help you with several areas of online business. You can use this to your advantage in internet marketing in several ways.
What Should You Give Away?
A free report, a gadget, even something small like a gift card or a free book can help you in several ways including: increasing subscribers, generating traffic, building a mailing list and increasing your SEO.
Subscribers and SEO and Mailing Lists-Oh My!
You can do the above in several ways including asking people to write about you on their blog with a link or referring others to your site. They can also write in comments on your blog as well as do social bookmarking to tell others about your contests.You can even really utilise the contest entry by building a mailing list and starting to build an autoresponder series. Use names of contest entries to try to sell other products or services of yours (do be sure you offer an opt-out link.).
In terms of building a following and getting attention, the small investment you make in a giveaway can result in your making more money online overall.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
Everybody does love free stuff but I think it’s getting harder to give things away. Just about every person I follow on Twitter sends me a link to get something free. Everywhere you go on the net has free e-books and reports etc. There’s more free stuff than I can keep up with.
I guess I just have to be more creative about what I want to give away.
Your right Jazz it has become the standard practice to get people on to lists.
Have a look at the stuff you get sent and you will find a trend there. Stay away from that type of freebies and come up with something that you don’t see anybody else doing.
Look at your niche and maybe Yahoo Answers to find out what people are asking for and you will have it.
Sean has suggested some other options as well
I am not there yet that I feel confident to give out a newsletter – would it still make sense to start with my list??? And I love free stuff as well, so I can understand the psychology behind it
Hi Renee
That would be an excellent place to start.
Hi Gee,
Have you started building a list, yet? That’s something I was planning to try next.
Sort of. I have an account with Aweber and a few on the list. I have neglected them and might ask them to follow me on FB until I can put in the time
Are you going to be giving something free away too?
I know now that one of the fastest ways to build a list is to do just that and have an optin form on your blog for people to subscribe to say a newletter or a free video series etc.
I think it is very exciting to do this stuff.
Hi Sean
I am in to giving away free stuff. I have made a newsletter which will be a freebie & help me to build a subscribers list. I would like to think I can come up with something really creative to give away, something of value and novel that people will really like to use. I have a couple of ideas in the pipeline.
I enjoyed reading this article thankyou.
Small giveaways!
You can be like someone we know and have a contest with a small giveaway with prizes worth $20,000.
Nah, I think I’ll try the free ebook.
Well, you say it’s value is $20,000 LOL!
E-books written by ourselves can be good free gifts – if we present/promote them correctly – as having something new to say or a different perspective on a topic
I just assumed everybody would realize that any ebook I write would have a value of $20K virtual dollars seeing as it’s coming from the mangled brain of someone older and “wiser”. {rofl}
You catch more flies with honey! I know that I opt in to get a free ebook or newsletter to scrounge for little gold nuggets of info or, more often, to see the “big” marketers stratagies \m/
Good strategy to check out how others are increasing the earning potential and find ways to tweek yours.
eeerrr…sorry, I meant bee’s (Damn coffee hurry up and kick in!)
Putting my thinking cap on the come up with a way of increasing my earning potential by giving away free stuff.
I have done a lot with other things where I have done sampling and it is a great way to increase their interest once they’ve got their foot in the door.
Of course it is ideal to do do it in a win/win manner so everyone benefits. Look at how you approach it because there are people that ’sniff’ around for the free stuff with no interest in anything whatsoever.
It is a matter of weighing up how much a customer is worth to you and what you spend on advertising and doing things a little differently and experimenting with your advertising dollar.
I think people like signing up and receiving free Ebooks – I must say I get sucked into that and it takes me a while to unsubscribe from an email list as I wait to see if there is anything else free on offer.