It may seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes the best way to sell your products is to give them away.
I recently took a closer look at Kyle T Webster’s stats for an in-depth case study (more on that soon!). Kyle has done a phenomenal number of sales of his custom photoshop brushes over the past several months.
A major pillar of his sales strategy is to give away some of his products. He does this in two ways:
Pay-what-you-want products:
Kyle has three small pay what you want products that give potential customers a sampling of his brushes. These products have generated tons of views and downloads since he started doing them in October. Here are the stats to date:
- 57,000+ product views
- 12,000+ downloads
- 39% conversion
Not only did tens of thousands of people view and download the products, but many also decided to pay him for it, resulting in over $3200 in revenue!
To download the free files, each of the 12,000+ customers entered their email address, allowing Kyle to add them to his mailing list and contact them about future product releases, pre-orders, sales, etc.
Limited giveaways of regular products:
Kyle also periodically offers a download of one of his regular products to three random Tumblr users if they reblog certain posts about his brush sets. He notes, “when the timing is right, these posts can lead to thousands of reblogs in a span of only a few hours.” This is a great way to get exposure to other people’s audiences.
Won’t this hurt my profits?
Consider all the famous chefs who post their recipes - their trade secrets - online, or the bands that release several singles before their album launches, or how you can practically eat a meal from all the samples at Costco.
Its all the same idea. Allow the world to experience your work and it will thrive.
The Harvard Business Review recently did a blog post on generosity as a growth strategy. In it the author talks about how “giving [customers] a little taste of something great will have [them] coming back for a lot more - at full price.”
There are three important outcomes of sharing your work freely:
- You build trust and credibility with your audience by showing them what you’re about and the quality of your work.
- You make your fans feel great and generate lots of goodwill. This, in turn, makes people want to talk about you and your work.
- You cultivate long-term relationships with your customers. If you build trust and make your fans feel great, they’ll be more likely to support your future project
A few weeks ago we talked about using some sort of bait, or an “ethical bribe" to entice people to sign up for your mailing list. I hope this has expanded on that concept and got you thinking about other ways you can get your products out into the world.