We're trying to decide whether to offer and ebook for free as an email list building tool or sale it while maybe providing a portion for preview. This will be our first attempt at distributing an ebook and we only have about 400 on our email list. Thoughts?
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This is a great question!
As you might imagine the answer isn't clean and clear cut.
1st I would say commit to a goal.
Deciding what result you want to accomplish with this ebook.
1. List building /lead nurturing.
A free ebook can help with list building and relationship building as the content can be broken out and stretched into content to fill your email marketing campaigns, videos, audios etc.. to help buils know, like and trust.
2. To boost sales.
The ultimate endgame is to make money. The path you take just varies. With a free ebook the path is slow and strategic. With a paid ebook the cycle is much shorter.
2nd Consider Your Funnel/Buying Cycle
People often talk about having a funnel with price points at each level to accommodate people. Just having a funnel isn't good enough these days.
People go through 5 different stages of decision making when it comes to hiring or buying something.
I created an info-graphic that helps you to place the right content and offers at the right buying stage. (See attached and let me know of it helps).
3rd Consider the pros and cons:
Benefits of a free ebook:
Paid ebooks
Paid ebooks are typically composed of information that isn't easily found on other blogs or free material around the web.
It would help to do some research and see what other businesses like yours are doing and answer these questions:
Imperfect Action:
It's easy to get caught up and paralyzed by weighing the pros and cons of how to publish your ebook. So, I would suggest to take imperfect action.
1. Use it for list building and offer for free if after your research you feel it's not meaty enough and add to it and re-purpose into a 2.0 paid version.
2. Offer a paid version and offer discounted or free versions as incentives or bonuses for people who purchase
I hope this helps, Let me know if I can help further :)
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Hi Kenya,
This is excellent information. You are correct, we are debating the pros & cons. I think the goal is the area of disagreement. I'm interested in list building, but my partner wants to use this as an immediate income source. We are repacking a list of tips we just distributed over the past 21 days. This will be our first attempt and our current email list is only at about 400.
So, assuming you've released eBooks in the past, how did you approach your very first eBook? Do you think it's more important to build a list or try to generate income? Also, have you experimented with advertising in an eBook to distribute it for free while potentially generating an income?