Affiliates! Make Money Giving Your Work Free Of Charge !

I've been in the publishing business for twenty years now, come late April that is, and in that time I've made a very good living selling my books direct to the public and sometimes with resell rights, but I've had very little success and lots of disappointments selling my work through other publishers. Then late last year I made a conscious decision to move away from selling purely to the public - either direct or through other publishers - and to give most of my work free of charge instead!

The idea was to update and use whatever I had produced in the past, and maybe also in the future, as a free incentive to people buying products I promote as an affiliate, and I have to say the decision was one of the best I ever made.

That's because, until November last year, if I promoted another person's product without my newly devised free incentive, I'd expect to make $2,000 or maybe two thousand dollars from sending one short email promotion to my own small mailing list.

With the freebie incentive I now make upwards of $4,000 for what amounts to an hour or two at most spent writing a short promotional email and finally sending my personal free gift as an attachment to people who buy my recommended product.

And it works equally well, sometimes better, every time I email my list. But I later found other benefits to giving my work away free, including on eBay, via articles at online article directories, also via contributions to forums and blogs. However, there is one big factor to take into consideration that makes this idea so very profitable.

That factor, or rather essential feature, is to make your free product at least as valuable as whatever you are promoting, and you should also make the product potentially more appealing to your target audience than the item you are asking people to buy.

So, when I recently promoted another person's book about making money from eBay classified ads., costing $47 and earning me around $30 a time, I gave one of my own books free of charge to buyers while emphasising that my book is twice as long as the other book and costs $20 more. I sold 300 copies of that other person's book in less than two days, compared to maybe ten sales I might have expected of my own book.

Then I transferred my idea to eBay and for starters I began giving my book about making money selling postcards on eBay to buyers of my own big bundle postcard lots. The idea was to attract more than just people wanting to browse through my bundles before losing interest and putting those postcards away for another century or so.

I was trying to capitalise on a massive audience of opportunity seekers on eBay who might consider buying my postcard bundles to resell those items individually on eBay. My book about making money selling vintage postcards on eBay told all they needed to make early profits in their new business. And that means, today, rather than getting fifty or sixty dollars for a bundle of 500 postcards which are outside my own selling area, I'm more likely to get $100 or more with my book offered as a freebie incentive.

I'm going to recommend you also try using free gifts, preferably information products, as incentives to generate bids and Buy It Now offers for your eBay promotions. I also recommend you try creating those information products yourself, either writing them from scratch, or by collecting and rearranging information from private label rights and public domain products in your chosen subject.

So if you're selling exercise equipment, you grab private label rights articles and public domain books about getting fit or losing weight, you compile all of that information into one Word document, then you turn it into a pdf eBook using free software available online. Find those free pdf creators by keying something like this into the search box at Google.com:

Pdf + free + creator

Free + pdf + software

When you have your pdf eBook, highlight it as a free gift in the sub-title for your eBay listing and expect to not only increase prices for products you're already selling on eBay, but also to grabbing custom from rivals sellers of similar products on eBay - without the free incentive!

Some ideas to make this idea work for you:

* Keep your free gifts permanently up-to-date. That's because you want your buyers to view your free gifts as the best part of whatever they're buying today, tomorrow, next month, next year. By offering good quality items, meaning not only informative but also up-to-date, you'll generate trust and credibility, also a list of regular buyers..... and that means you can begin selling your products outside of eBay, with or without additional freebie offers.

* Make your free gift as relevant as possible to whatever product you want people to buy. Which more or less means it's a bad idea to offer an eBook about choosing healthy foods for babies to someone who has just booked a retirement cruise. Instead, for that retirement cruise you are promoting as an affiliate, consider adding a freebie guide to free and low cost entertainment at destinations on route. If you're selling computers or children's party clothing, offer guides to making money online and containing dozens of party games, respectively.

* When someone buys your recommended product, send an email from your outside eBay mail box, thanking them for their purchase and asking them to confirm the email address where they want to receive their attachment. Then when replies come in, answer and send your attachments through your outside eBay mail box. Do not leave details about free gifts or download areas via eBay's system which might suggest you are trying to sell products outside of eBay without paying eBay its rightful commissions.

Now that should give you something to think about but if you want to learn more then you can download FOUR STEPS TO INTERNET MARKETING MILLIONS at: http://www.dailyprofitplans.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Avril_Harper