Many people reading this are Internet marketers. Usually, that means you are selling or giving away digital products. What is the worth of your digital products? You're reading one right now. You paid a certain amount of money to download this book. What is it worth to you?
Since I’m offering a life-changing way to run your business, it’s worth quite a lot to the right person. If I were to personally coaching you on the information you’re reading right now, you would have paid several thousands of dollars. If you act on the information, regardless of my personal attention, it's worth more money than you can currently imagine.
If you do nothing with this information or don't even read it, it is worth nothing. If you take it on face value because you are not physically holding it right now, it's worth nothing.
What is the value of advertising? It used to be that all you would have to do is set up a great ad and you could make countless sales of whatever it was you were trying to sell. These days, even great ads are kicked to the curb by accidental and purposeful viral marketing campaigns.
What's the worth of the products on your hard drive? You've paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for some of them, but they’re worth $0 if you've never done anything with them. You've paid $0 for some of them that you’ve gone on to earn hundreds or thousands of dollars from.
I hope you can start to see my point. It's easy to feel like everything you create should be worth hundreds of dollars per sale. You are, after all, a genius thinker. But, it's time to get over yourself. Just because what you create is worth a lot of money and will help a lot of people doesn't mean you need to charge a premium price for it. It’s shortsighted thinking.
Are those $2,000 products people are selling you really worth more than that $97 product by a marketer you trust more? Is a $97 product really worth more than a well thought out free product that’s a game-changer in the marketplace?
No. There is no "true" worth of a digital product. It’s worth whatever it is worth to the end-user. If you pour your heart and soul into creating a free product that will really help people, it is worth quite a lot. It will mean so much to those who download it. It will also mean a lot to you because it will give an important boost to your business. It's worth something, but you're going to give it away for nothing. Check your ego at the door, and I think you'll find that the free model works.
Are Digital Products Worth $0?
It used to be in the Internet marketing space that many more people charged a lot more for their digital products - even for "low priced" Warrior Special Offers. Now, there's so much competition and so many other marketers that a more typical price is between $7 and $17. Even that price can be perceived to be a lot these days. Try to sell a digital ebook for $47 or $97 and you're going to have a more difficult time if you don't have a solid name or brand behind you already. It wasn't that way just a short time ago.
The price is driven down when there's a huge supply of something. There are digital books out there on nearly every topic under the sun. There are an unbelievable number of "new releases" that can hardly be differentiated from what came before them. Very few marketers are savvy enough to differentiate their products. Very few marketers really stand out.
There are many marketers who believe that supply is only going to increase, essentially driving the price of digital products down to $0. Will anyone be willing to pay for digital books in the future? Whether you believe that will happen or not, you have to realize that the competition is out there and the competition is fierce. Embrace the trend toward zero and use it to your advantage.
The Demand Is There but the Supply Is High
Go ahead and do a little digging. Turn to Amazon.com, ClickBank.com, and other digital marketplaces. Do a search for a topic you're an expert in and have or plan to have products in. How many products are out there on that specific topic? How many can you count that are really different from one another?
Now, approach the situation as if you were one of your customers. You type in the search term to find these products, and you are bombarded with many that are barely distinguishable from the next. How do you choose?
If you're unfamiliar with any of the marketers, you'll probably go with the lowest priced one that seems okay. And because today's digital economy is what it is, you'll most likely find one that's completely free. You'll ignore the ones that are $97 and deliver nearly the same information.
The supply is such that people can get what they want for free in many cases. So why shouldn't you be there in that free category to capture those leads? Why shouldn't you be there with your free ebook that outshines anything the competition could ever hope to offer? Then, you can also be there with enticing and desirable upgrades, personal consulting and coaching, and more. You're going to stand out, get a ton more traffic and prospects, and make more sales as a result.
Viral Marketing in a Free World
Viral marketing is one of the most important things for you to get a grasp on in today's digital economy. Paying for ads is fantastic and I highly recommend it. I'm not one to shy away from investing in my business. However, there's definitely something to be said for free viral marketing. In fact, word-of-mouth marketing is the oldest form of marketing and has arguably always been the most effective.
It used to be very easy to get a lot of attention with your paid ads because there was little competition. These days, there is a lot of competition. Even when you pay for ads, you still rely on things like social proof so that people know your product is a good one--people are wary of "marketers." That's part of the reason why advertising on Facebook works so well. It's paid advertising built on the word-of-mouth model.
It's time to really make a splash with everything you give away, and everything you sell. Think of the free method of marketing as another form of advertising-- the "old fashioned" way. You want your information and your brand to be so powerful and interesting that people talk about it.
You want people talking about you on social media, in person, and on blogs. You want to have brand evangelists out there who are so excited about what you have to offer that they can't help but shout your name from the digital mountain tops.
The way to go viral these days is to do so with free products and viral marketing concepts. The trick is that you have to be different. People have to be intrinsically motivated to share something of yours. It should be funny, mysterious, shocking, controversial, amazingly helpful, motivational, or different in some other way. You can run viral advertising campaigns or give products away that you hope will go viral.
You can do this with ebooks, reports, white papers, courses, video, physical products, audio, and any other kind of digital product you can think of. Take a look at what has gone viral in your niche and use that as a starting place to brainstorm ideas for yourself.
What kind of free products can you come up with that will really excite people and that they will freely spread around? Make it clear that you want people to spread your content freely.
Here's another point; piracy is a fact of life -- a despicable one, to be sure . What could you do to actually encourage that, with certain campaigns (certainly not everything), while growing your brand and your traffic at the same time? These are all important things to consider as you dive into the strategy.
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