10 Great Ideas for Creating Free Information Products

by Debbie LaChusa

Providing your prospects or customers with free information products is a great way to provide extra value or to provide an incentive for them to make a purchase or to register for your ezine or newsletter.

And if you write a report or article and provide it as a free download from your web site, you have no printing or delivery costs and you can drive traffic to your site.

If you don't like discounting your products or services, but are looking for another incentive to get customers to buy or opt-in to your mailing list, offering free information as a special bonus is a great alternative.

Do you have a new product or service, or a special package or pricing that you'd like to promote? Put the link for your free report on the page of your site that promotes that product or service.

You can also market in reverse. Include the web page link you want to promote in the signature on your free report. Send prospects or customers to your web site for more information on the report topic.

Or position your product or service as a great solution to a problem your report addresses. Just be sure your report includes plenty of good content. You don't want your prospects or customers to be upset when they take the time to download and read your report, only to find out it is merely an ad for your services.

Provide good information. Address your customers concerns. Provide tips or solutions that will help them with their business, their relationships, their health and fitness, or whatever aspect of their life your product or service addresses.

Think about the expertise and experience you have that your customers could learn from. What knowledge do you have about your industry that might be helpful? What types of questions do you hear from customers and prospects most often? Answer them in a free report.

What do they have trouble with? Help them with it through a how-to article. Think about the time of year. If your product or service is a popular gift item, provide tips on how to buy it as a gift for someone else.

If you work in a business-to-business field, can you provide a checklist of what to look for (or look out for) when comparing products or service providers in your category?

Be creative. Write about what you know. And what you know will help your customers.

Free reports can cover any number of topics. Following are 10 ideas you may want to consider.

1)  How-To Articles

These could be how-to-buy, or how-to-do something related to your product or service.

2)  Special Reports
Write an article on a topic related to your business that you know a lot about.

3)  Customer or Industry Survey Results (conduct an informal customer survey and publish the results, or report on results of an industry survey)

4)  What to Look For reports

Provide your customers or prospects tips on what to look for before making a purchase in your product category.

5)  What to Look Out For reports

Provide tips on things to watch out for when shopping or comparing products or services in your industry.

6)  Shopping Checklists

Provide a checklist your prospects can use when comparing products or service providers.

7)  Top 10 Problems or Mistakes

Provide a list of the top 10 problems consumers face with regard to your product or service category.

8)  Top 10 Ideas or Solutions

Provide solutions to those problems!

9)  Quizzes and Inventories

Create a quiz or an inventory consumers can take to evaluate their knowledge or fit for a product or service.

10) 10 Most Common Questions

Present a list of questions you hear most often in your industry, and provide answers to those questions.

© Copyright 2006 Debbie LaChusa

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing System to make marketing your own business as simple as answering 10 questions. Learn more about this unique, step-by-step system and get a free Marketing Mini-Course when you subscribe to the free, weekly 10stepmarketing Ezine at http://www.10stepmarketing.com

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article as long as you make no changes and you include the "About the Author" information at the end.  Please let me know if and where you use this article by emailing me.

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