Suppose you have just created an information product and someone wants you to give it to them free of charge?  Should you do it? In this article, I am not going to address giving copies away to your friends and family.  That is up to you.  Nor am I going to address the concept of giving away bonus ebooks on occasion as part of a promotion. That can be a great marketing strategy when properly applied. Today I am talking about the idea of perfect strangers asking for a free copy of your information product and how to respond.

Quite frankly, I get an email almost every day from someone asking me to give them my course for free. It always goes something like this; "It doesn't hurt to ask, so I wanted to see if you would give me your product for free?" While I generally hold my tongue, the question I always want to ask is, "Do I come to your house and ask you to give me free stuff? Do I come to your workplace and say, "Hey, whatever you are selling at your workplace, I want it for free." That would not fly. But people feel compelled to come to me and ask for my course for free. I always tell them that if they do not pay for it, they will not value it.

For example, I have a lot of free ebooks sitting on my hard drive right now that I have never read. Why? Because they were given to me. In all honesty if I spend $27 for an ebook, I am going to read it because I spent good money for it. But if somebody gives it to me free, it will most likely sit on my hard-drive and I will get to it when I get to it, which is usually never.

I could go on and on about this topic, but I really do get one of those emails almost every day. I have even had people say to me, "Give it to me and if I make any money in six months I will pay you out of the proceeds." Well, again, that is ridiculous, because you have no vested interest. If you got it for free you would not have any get up and go to do anything with it, and so all I would be doing is just giving my stuff away for free all day long. I have to make a living too and I happen to do that by selling information products that I truly believe in. Not to mention the fact that I have put my valuable time and expertise in the product I have to offer.  In short, people are much more likely to make use of a quality information product if it has monetary value associated with it.

Consider my business.  People are always talking about how to make money on the internet. The big question is, "Where is the meat?" Give me some step-by-step videos. That is precisely why I have sold so many of my courses, because I have step-by-step videos. I am not just telling people what they ought to do.  I show them exactly how to do it. If you take the same track and you cover the details and not just the highlights of the information you are selling, then you will do very well.

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about Stephen Beck
Stephen Beck teaches families how to sell information. Check outStephen's 3 free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so your family can start today.

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