photo credit: laurenatclemson
Here’s a short story for those of you who are procrastinating on putting together some kind of free teaser content to get someone to subscribe to your site.
Me, just now?
I subscribed to a good-looking but outdated site about free traffic, just to get possibly the world’s stupidest and most out-dated traffic tip, bar none that I’ve seen in the last 4 years. The site it came from actually has the occasional really good tip, so I’m not going to out them.
At least not here.
But the moral of the story?
Is the curiosity factor. I know just about everything there is to know about generating traffic.
I got that way by researching even the remotest possibility of someone having a website promotion strategy that I didn’t know about. 99% of the time I’m told about the dumbest possible trick that won’t work for 100s of reasons.
You know how I decide whether or not to sign up though? It’s not the tip – how do I know what that is until I subscribe and get the freebie?
It’s the site’s other content. Even if I get a hint that the freebie might be useless, I’m not actually signing up FOR the freebie. I’m signing up to be reminded periodically that the site exists and may help me.
POSSIBLY getting a good tip in the process is gravy.
The point is: a LOT of people think the same way I do. Most people who are any type of online-savvy are already hip to the “free gift with sign-up” tactic. It’s something those of us who are on the fence use to talk ourselves into giving that site our time of day.
Bottom line?
Do it. Find a freebie, and dangle the “ooo shiny” to get me to sign up.
But.
Find a GREAT freebie. In fact, find a COLLECTION of great freebies related to your topic and dangle THAT, not some useless drivel that insults my intelligence. Even the most web-shy newbie appreciates being treated like they have half a brain.
And if this site had presented me with something that actually lived up to the hype? I was a sale waiting to happen. I’m sitting here with my fiance’s credit card spending up all his money, $97 more wouldn’t have hurt either of us. 
So, go do it. NOW before you forget. It can be 1- 5 pages long – who has time for a 100 page ebook anymore anyway – unless they paid for it?
It can be a video, an audio, a transcript of an older teleseminar product you’ve decommissioned.
Because?
If your site is halfway decent and your prospect is interested anyway, a good freebie upon sign-up can get them down off the fence, and turn them into a subscriber, then a sale.
Extra piece for affiliates: Are you marketing your own squeeze page, or turning over that traffic directly to another site. There’s no surer way to make sure your affiliate link is the one that’s clicked than to send them there from your OWN site, where you give away your OWN freebie, to sign up to, yes, your OWN newsletter, so you can help business people find different ways to meet their needs.
Oh, and on the what’s happening next front, I’m going to reveal the new tip-a-day newsletter sometime this week, the new membership sometime in the next 14 days and some articles on How to Create Unstoppable Traffic, as well as another free guide.
