Three months ago, Christina Kerley asked a group of marketers and frequent bloggers (including me) a simple question: What is the single greatest point of value you receive from blogging? I thought the question was phrased well because it asked about value (which is a bottom-line thing) and it forced people to choose just one answer.
CK has compiled the responses from about 30 bloggers, some of whom you will probably recognize, into a clever PDF collage that she’s giving away for free. It’s a quick read and gets to the heart of why people are so passionate about blogging. Notice how few bloggers mention money as a motivation.
But speaking of money, CK’s experiment is also a smart move for her business. For the price of her own time and whatever she paid a deisgner, she’s come up with a unique product that demonstrates innovation, market knowledge and focus. I have no doubt that thousands of people will read this document and the viral buzz will be good for Christina’s business.
I love the idea of giving away useful content as a way to demonstrate market mastery. It’s a win-win for the giver and the receiver. The best example I’ve seen of this was David Meerman Scott, who used a free ebook called The New Rules of PR to establish himself as a thought leader in his business. Nearly 100,000 downloads later, he’s got a new career, a book in the works and a lot of running room in front of him.
Hey Paul, thanks for including me in your analysis. Blogging has changed my life. Not only did my little ebook generate some 110,000 downloads (and counting), it led to a book deal, got me a dozen or so (paid) speaking gigs and some new clients too.
I am looking forward to reading your new book.
Cheers, David
Great How-To Ebooks, Download Now at Lowest Prices
Have you downloaded any of those $97 ebooks recently? A great many people are writing fluffed up
ebooks that have little valuable information, but they sell for $47 or more.
The majority of these fluffed-up monsters would be reduced to just a few pages without all the needless, page count expanding filler.
Recently, I purchased a much advertised AdSense ebook about how to make thousands of dollars every
month from Google AdSense. I read the whole ebook and the only advice was to make the AdSense ads
blend in with the rest of your site so they don’t look like ads.
These types of ebooks are fluffed-up in order to justify the high price. If this ebook were reduced
to the really useful info, people would complain about pay such a high price for just a few pages of
information.
There’s a new trend in ebooks – make them ‘short and to the point’. Straight and simple information, quickly explained so you can make use of it without wasting a lot of time sorting thru junk pages.
Prices so low that the $97 ebook gurus might have a heart attack!
How much? Do you like seven dollars?
Look at this Gigantic Selection of $7 Ebooks