Have you nailed it with your free giveaway?
Offering a valuable, relevant, short and simple freebie can:
- grow your email list steadily
- impress new readers
- help you make money online
As your email list and brand advocate base grows, your profits will eventually follow.
But you need to pick a freebie intelligently to benefit from this neat little tool bandied about by bloggers and internet marketers the world around.
The money is not in the list.
Nope.
The money is in the value you share with the humans who signed up for your email list, leading to strong relationships and repeat sales.
Keep these 4 ideas in mind when creating a free giveaway for your blogging community.
1: Relevant
Align your free giveaway with your blog topic.
Blogging tips bloggers would giveaway a free report, eBook or some valued content related to building a successful blog.
Nothing confuses readers more than seeing a free giveaway not related to your niche. If you’re a personal development blogger why offer a free giveaway designed to help you build an online business?
Align. Shine.
Boost downloads of your free giveaway.
My friend Ileane Smith of Basic Blog Tips is the Queen of YouTube.
She knows how to create and share videos on YouTube in her sleep, sharing fabulously helpful videos and blog posts with her community.
Check out her free giveaway:
5 must have tools to get started on YouTube fits her audience perfectly.
This is how it’s done, folks.
2: Create it Yourself
Even if you are a newbie blogger I advise against offering freebies created by another blogger.
Doing so builds the other blogger’s credibility by leaps and bounds. Yours? Not so much. Anybody can download a freebie offered by a top blogger – said blogger encouraging you to offer the freebie freely of course – and send the free content to their email list. If anybody can do it, do you honestly believe offering another blogger’s freebie will impress your readers?
Build your own credibility. Put in the legwork to create the freebie. Learning how to craft a free giveaway takes time, energy and patience. Sitting down to create the thing requires you to double down on your efforts. Not anybody can create a freebie. You better believe readers will do a double take when you attach your name to the free offering.
3: Pick the Format
What freebie format seems the most appealing to you and your audience? Find the match and create that sucker.
The most traditional freebie is the free report. Basically you create content in a Word document, save it as a PDF and email it to new subscribers after they sign up for the freebie.
Free reports are easy to write and equally easy to download and read. If you have access to Word you can create a free report right now.
Short and sweet seems to work nicely for giveaway reports. Perhaps 7-10 pages.
No need to go overboard though. Even though being generous and giving away free content abundantly rocks, guard against the urge to go bonkers. I used to do a free eBook giveaway every Friday on my blog since I wrote and self-published 126 eBooks. All well and good but my sales dropped off and I suspect my readers were a bit overwhelmed with all of the free content, even though they appreciated my gesture.
Other possible formats: free video series, free audio series or perhaps a combination of free text, audio and video.
Just make it simple though. Craft a lead magnet; not the next War and Peace.
4: Jam-Pack Value into the Freebie
Create a valuable free giveaway.
Offer readers a harbinger of things to come with your blog.
Readers love value. If they dig your valuable, simple, powerful free giveaway said readers will buy into your blog and brand quickly. These folks become brand advocates who shout out your blog freely to their tribes, expanding your reach far and wide.
Bonus Tip
Remember; you do not need a free giveaway to become a successful online entrepreneur.
Every time you publish a blog post, video or podcast, it is a free giveaway. You giving away your knowledge for free.
Your readers will flock to you if you give away free value regularly; even if you don’t do a free giveaway.
eBook
If you want tips for launching a successful free giveaway buy my eBook: