Should You Sell Your Ebook Or Give it For Free?

OK, you’ve heard from folks who’ve made thousands or millions of dollars selling ebooks. Some even say that ebooks are now passé. Is this true, or only a myth? Why should you give away an ebook that you’ve worked so hard to create? Should you give “resell rights” to your ebook?

Now, if you’re about to write (or have just completed writing) your first ebook and are inundated with questions like the one above, this article will help you arrive at an educated decision.

First of all, you need to decide what you plan to offer now and in the near future. If you’re writing for the fist time, I would suggest you to write a short ebook and give it for free. Free does not necessarily mean “free direct download” from your website, but you can offer to send the download link to visitors who signup / register with you. Once you have them on your optin list, you can follow up with them for your other “paid products” slowly and gradually. If your “free ebook” was useful enough for your visitors, they’ll be more confident to buy your paid products – you’ve already gained their trust by proving yourself as an expert and a knowledgeable person.

The “other paid products” that you later plan to sell to your optin list could be a multimedia course, a physically shipped CD or DVD product, invitation for a seminar, or simply promoting other related products as an affiliate. Whatever you do, your goal should be to start with a free report / ebook, then maybe a $27 or $47 ebook or mini course, then maybe a $297 or $497 course, then maybe a $1k or $2k seminar / live workshop. Or maybe you just want to generate leads for your expensive consulting business. This is how gurus reach their status – they first bait you with something free and then slowly and gradually push you through their marketing funnel which has high priced products at the end.

You can even choose to write an ebook and offer resell rights with it. If your ebook is really good, people will not mind paying for it. And if you offer resell rights to it, it adds a viral component to it as people will want to sell it and they’re baited by the “money factor”. Very soon, more folks will have access to it and read it, making you more popular. You can also bait readers by having a link inside the ebook where the reader can sign up for updates to the ebook. You can also promote your other products or third party products with your affiliate links, from within the ebook. This is great free advertisement!

Having said that, you first have to decide what you plan to do and what you are capable of doing. Can you do all this? If you’re planning to write a great ebook on something that you have an obnoxious amount of knowledge and experience and you don’t plan to do anything else as far as this niche is concerned, I would suggest you to sell your ebook. It isn’t very easy as some people do not consider the value of the information, especially when it is delivered in a digital downloadable format, like a pdf ebook. These are exceptions but nevertheless, present. This is why internet marketers have started offering information products in other forms like professionally recorded audio, video, etc. This increased the “perceived value” of the product, so to speak. Even though the content may be exactly identical, consumers are willing to pay more on the pretext that creating the audio / video is “hard work” the author has undergone. Hence it is more valuable, according to them! But what about the “core information value”? The author probably spent a good number of years of his life (and also probably a lot of money) learning what he is trying to teach you. But it is the packaging of the information that has decided the price it will sell at. This does not mean that you cannot sell a high priced ebook. If you as the author are able to convince your prospect with the right sales letter / presentation pitch, they will buy from you.

I hope you found some golden nuggets in this short article. Remember, you need to give at least something free, to gain trust in your marketplace. Once you’re a known authority in your field, you can choose only to sell products; the convincing job is already done!