To Sell or Not To Sell Your Product?

This rather clichéd title refers to the decision you need to make about providing a product, script, service or ebook for free, or if you charge for it. In this article I’ll give you some of my views on the advantages of each model and how it might benefit your business.

Advantages of doing it for free

1) Get something for free, remember me later.

Everyone likes something for nothing, and giving something away can be excellent for business. If what you give away has your business contact details plastered all over it such as cheap stress balls, mouse mats, pens, etc, then your customers will think of you when they need something you sell.

2) Free now, buy later.

Very few people are willing to pay for something upfront without some kind of taster. They’ll probably buy something more expensive from you at a later date. Limited trial versions of software work well on this principle.

3) Getting a large audience.

If you had a free ebook or website resource, you can plaster the site with affiliate links or advertising. But just think how much word of mouth advertising you would get if you gave away something of value for free. You get plenty of exposure to your content and therefore have a captive audience to earn you money through advertising or affiliate deals.

4) Reputation and respect.

Give valuable information away for free, and you will eventually build a strong reputation. You can use this respect as the basis for a premium level of service or product, where your reputation leaves customers more willing to spend money with you. This doesn’t work so well with products, but very well with ebooks and services.

Advantages of charging for it

1) Work once, sell lots.

Once you have put in a large amount of effort, you can reap the rewards by selling it. If you have an information product, then the cost of selling the ebook many times over is where you generate lots of cash. Similarly, if you offer a subscription service to the same information, then your earnings multiple whilst your effort stays the same if you had only 1 member or 1000.

2) Copyright theft.

Particularly when it comes to information products, you vastly reduce the likelihood of copyright theft as you reduce the number of users with access to your content. However, since your content has value (because you sell it), then you might get people re-selling your content as their own.

3) Get them to work for you.

If you have a premium product, then you can exploit affiliate systems to have webmasters earn a commission by selling your product. This massively increases the market that you are able to reach on your budget, particularly because you only pay affiliates once they’ve earnt you sales.

Conclusion

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to selling something or giving it away for free. I’ve personally done well with the latter, and exploited it to give me a platform for offering premium products and services. I’d love to hear your perspectives and stories too!