Free. It’s one of the most powerful words in the dictionary. Everybody loves free. And free, or at least giving things away for free, means traffic and money for the blogger that’s doing the giving.
Physical swag, like free iPhones MacBooks always draws the crowds, but thankfully for all those bloggers who can’t, or simply don’t want to, want to dig deep into their pockets it’s free downloads that really make the page counters spin. Instant gratification is the name of the game.
More importantly those free downloads will bring traffic in perpetuity whilst giving away a physical freebie will only attract traffic for as long as your supply of physical freebies lasts.
If you can create, or have access to, digital goods that are of value to people and are happy, and legally authorized, to give them away for free then people will, without a shadow of a doubt, come and take them. And once you’ve got happy visitors, enjoying your products and coming back for more, successful monetization is a lot easier to achieve.
An interesting read, but I find it unusual that you link to your Futurosity Mag theme. While it is undoubtedly one the top WordPress themes of all time, your current demo site does not do it, nor your other themes justice. A link to the Futurosity demo leaves nothing but question marks for those who have not seen it in all it’s glory before.
Now you have no excuse whatsoever linking to illegal downloads of the four hour work week book, no matter if you think the book sucks or not. I’d like to hear you talk yourself out of this one.
Josef – The Wordpress Theme demo is undergoing something of a makeover at the moment to make sure that all the themes are accessible and displaying correctly.
Wesley – I don’t need to justify my actions to you so I have nothing to talk myself out of. It’s good to challenge the status quo from time to time. The blogosphere has far too many stale and impotent blogs in the make money online niche and it’s refreshing to see someone shaking things up a little. Combine that with my hatred for get rich quick scams and it’s clear to see why linking to his post was irresistible.
yikes – that kid has balls…..unless he is in cahoots with Mr Ferris himself, that cannot be legal.
I can’t agree more, that’s why I’ve decided to give away a copy of Adobe CS 4 (Web or Production) as a prize over the next month. If you know any Flash animators who are looking to do awesome animations, send them over to my site for more details.