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In this episode, we talk about the best way to create a free opt-in.
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Let’s dive into this week’s question!
SHANE: Today’s question comes from Janelle Afrasiab.
JOCELYN: Sorry, we completely butchered your name, Janelle.
SHANE: Janelle A. is what we’re going to go with, I guess. Janelle writes:
“I have written a book of Spanish activities. There are 180 activities in total. If I were to give away a sampling on my website, how many do you suggest I should include or should I give away one free with every episode of my podcast and then I’ll have 180 podcast ideas? What do you think?”
JOCELYN: All right, Janelle. There are a lot of different ideas or theories about how you should give things away on your website. For me, what I have always done is kind of err on the side of giving extra things away for free. For example, when I sold my first year of lesson plans on my Elementary Librarian site, I gave away all of the activities for free and I did that for a reason. It was because I knew that if I have free activities, people would continue to come onto my website and ultimately, that is my goal with my materials. I want you always coming back to my website.
When I give something away to people, in fact, I don’t even attach it to an email. I make it a link to a page on my website so that people are always coming back and engaging with my content on my site. In that regard, that means that someone might actually come back and maybe they will see one of my advertisements for my products and theoretically, maybe they might buy it. So that always gives you an opportunity to have people coming back to your site and potentially purchasing one of your paid products.
SHANE: The rule of thumb generally is to give away something that will blow people’s minds, something that will make you stand out from the competition. You said you might want to give away one per podcast, I can see that you could talk about these activities in your podcast but I’m not sure if you want to just trickle little bits of information like that out. Jocelyn gave away, when we first started, an entire month of lesson plans for librarians and when I started out, I gave away an entire playbook which that’s usually what most coaches sell is their playbook, a paid product.
I think with something like this, you’ve got to look at it and say what am I going to give away that is going to get someone to give me that email address? Would you go to a website and for one activity, would you put in your email address just to get that one activity? That’s kind of the question you have to ask yourself.
To specifically answer your question, I think that maybe you could take like 20 of the 180 activities and put them into an eBook and that might be a great opt-in you could say, “Hey, check out this activity. It’s one of 20. If you want all 20, give me your email” and then once you get those emails, you know they liked your activities, so maybe then you could put the other 160 into a book that you could sell as an additional product.
JOCELYN: As far as your podcast question, I think it’s a good idea to give things away in your podcast from time to time but maybe not every single activity. You could mention, “Hey, I used this particular activity in my book of Spanish activities or whatever it’s called, and you can find it here in my show notes” and have a link to purchase it there.
SHANE: A great way to sell things in your podcast is to explain what is in the activity book. You can say, “All right, this week, we’re going to talk about great activity for your classroom. It’s XYZ, do this, that and the other with your kids” and you can explain everything in your podcast about what that activity is and then at the end you can say, “This activity is included in my free eBook of 20 other activities and in my $20 180 Activity eBook, full of activities” and that’s where they are going to actually find handouts, instructions, printables, and all the things to do that. So you can tell them what to do in your podcast but then they can pay you or give you an email address to get all the materials to show you how to do it.
JOCELYN: We actually heard something really good at a conference that we went to recently. The person that was doing the presentation, I can’t remember who it was, but he said, “Give away the condiments but sell the hamburger.”
SHANE: Right.
JOCELYN: So just something to think about. You do want your free opt-in product to be something that people will be willing to pay for because if people do not like your free product, they are not going to purchase your paid product and that’s our ultimate goal in online business. We hoped that helped answer your question, Janelle, and good luck with the Spanish site.
SHANE: Alright guys, that’s our Q&A with S&J for the day. Always remember when you’re creating opt-ins to give away something that you would pay money for and make it awesome and you can sell the rest of it to your customers later. Until next time, we’ll catch you all on the flipside. See you later.
JOCELYN: Bye.
SHANE: One more thing guys, if you would like immediate one-on-one help from Jocelyn and myself, all you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/TalkToUs, that’s all one word. You can check out our consulting services. We do not do a lot of consulting but we do block out a few hours a week where we can get on the phone, get on Skype, get on a Google Hangout, and talk to you about your online business where you can work personally with me and Jocelyn to help you go to the next level.
If you need any help, if you need one-on-one attention and you just can’t wait until maybe we select you for a Flipped Podcast, all you have to do is go to FlippedLifestyle.com/TalkToUs and you can check out when our schedule is available for you to get on a consulting call.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
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Michael says
Hi guys!
Jocelyn: can you be a bit more specific on how you get people to return to a page on your site to claim their ‘freebie’?
I’m assuming you’re using LeadPages or LeadBoxes to do this. So…once people have entered their name and email address, do you redirect them to your site and allow them to click on a link to download the PDF that’s stored on your WordPress site?
I am not 100% sure I understand the flow. Most of the info I’ve seen on LeadPages and LeadBoxes shows the delivery of the free material being automatically delivered to the person’s email inbox.
Help!