HowTo: Truly Benefiting from the Offering of Free Stuff

It is said that if you have something to give away for free, you will be able to attract lots of attention to your blog for your free offering. This has been used by many bloggers for a long time with varying results.

Offering freebies on your blog has it’s advantages, if it’s done right:

Generates Traffic;
Generates Relevant BackLinks;
Creates Awareness;
Increases Readership;
Improves Subscriber Count;
and so on, and so on…

Not everyone is looking for all of those advantages. Each blogger has his/her own reasons for putting free stuff on the internet. Some bloggers are in it for the potential profit, while others just do it simply for the fun of it. Personally, I do it for both reasons.

Does offering free giveaways benefit me? It sure does, but to really benefit from free giveaways one must follow a few simple rules:

Offer Useful Stuff

The first and most important thing about offering a Freebie is that there must be some kind of demand for what you are trying to give away. If nobody wants it, you won’t be able to give it away. Simple as that. The more useful that your Free Giveaway is, the more people will want it and share it with those in their circle of influence.
Offer Quality Stuff

You’ve managed to create interest in your Free Offering. Next you need to make sure that what you are offering is worth the time people are going to spend looking at your giveaway. It’s not enough to make the offering look attractive to people. You must provide some benefit to the consumer for grabbing your giveaway. If your Free Giveaway is not worth it, you will not get the word of mouth advertising that comes along with Freebies.

Think of yourself, would you find value in what you are giving away? Would your freebie benefit you? Would you recommend this freebie to others if you came across it? If not… then don’t bother offering it in the first place.
Offer Original and Unique Stuff

I’m not talking about reinventing the wheel. Now dressing it up and calling it a car doughnut might be an option. If you do it right and add your own personality to the product, it could be highly successful.

What I’m talking about is most commonly called re-sharing.

If a product is not unique, chances are that your target audience has already seen it. When releasing a *FREE* product, the one to benefit most is the original source. The “ultimate lists” have managed to do quite well rehashing on the success of others, but in the end, they are just shuffling traffic back to the original source.
Market Your Free Offering Like It’s A Paid Product

You’ve managed to meet all the above qualifications… Congratulations!!! You have a viable free offering that is going to certainly make waves. Assuming of course that you can muster up the traffic that you need to provide your free product with the awareness and exposure that it needs to take off effectively.

For example: Say I was to create a Free Template for Wordpress. First I would create a professional sales page detailing why one should use the Free Template that I have created. I would outline what the benefits and features of the Theme are. I would also focus on what is unique about this theme that one would not be able to find anywhere else. Then, a carefully written press release would be sent out to all the design magazines and blogs. Hopefully, creating enough interest from the publishers so that they run an article on what a great product my new free theme is. This in turn would lend credibility to my new free release.

When done correctly, the effect will be like a snowball rolling down a hill picking up snow along the way turning into a massive ball of raw energy attracting a good deal of traffic, backlinks, comments, community involvement and of course… many, many downloads.

This last point requires more time and attention to detail than the rest of the process, but the satisfaction is guaranteed — The more seriously you treat your free offerings, the more successful they will be. Sharing free things with others can be worth it’s weight in gold when done right.