Everybody loves a freebie, but what people love even more are freebies that are useful. Before we jump into why freesources can help your blog let’s chat about what they actually are, and why free is a bit of a loose term when it comes to freesources.

What are Freesources?

Freesources are basically free resources that you give away on your blog. The important thing is that they are resources. Instead of holding some kind of giveaway for a prize that you need to send out, freesources tend to be an intangible thing. Maybe a PDF of information related to your blogs topic, a checklist, a spreadsheet, some graphics like social media buttons or backgrounds, a secret video for your users to watch. It’s something that supplements what is on your blog usually in a different format.

Are freesources really free?

Well…in some cases yes. Some websites will simply be like hey, here’s some free backgrounds for you, just click and download. But for the most part freesources are given away for trade. Usually before you can get your hands on those freesources you will need to hand over your name and email address, essentially signing up to the blogs subscriber list.

If you have to pay in cold hard cash for those resources then they are no longer freesources.

How can freesources help?

Like I mentioned at the start, everybody loves a freebie. If you can build yourself a nice little freesource library of truly useful resources for your readers then chances are you’re going to be getting more readers hitting that subscribe button and handing over their name and email address.

Once readers are already on your site reading a post related to your freesource, chances are they’re going to jump at the chance to get their hands on whatever it is you have on offer.

How to get those clicks

The most important thing to get those clicks (or names and emails) is to write content related to your freesource. If I have a post about DIY flat lay backgrounds then I could link that post to free flat lay backgrounds. I already know that the reader is interested in flat lay backgrounds so the chances are there’s going to be a high click through rate.

In some cases you might want to offer an above the fold subscribe box on your home page to get the freesources, but use it wisely. You’ll generally want to save that for big things that would appeal to your entire blog audience, or for things that will earn you cash or are free but lead in to a cash purchase.

Mailing Lists

Mailing list freesources are a massive sparkly shiny ball of awesome, or, the people that sign up for them are. You’ve probably seen or even subscribed to one. It’s basically a subscription to a series of lessons or information given via email.

Subscribe now to learn the 8 steps to making money with your blog in eight email instalments.

The reason why you should love these subscribers is because they’ve actually signed up to receive the newsletter by choice. If you’re giving away graphics or checklists chances are a percentage of those subscribers are going to be begrudging sign ups because they want those backgrounds but aren’t really interested in your newsletter.

These lovelies want your newsletter, they want to hear what you have to say, and you now have a direct line to reach out to these people, to keep them coming back to your blog, and to keep offering them more useful bits and pieces.

Tasters for Cash

Some of you might be thinking, well, that’s great but I want cold hard cash not names and emails. Possibly you haven’t quite grasped how important names and email can be but we’ll forgive you for that. Anyway, if it’s cash your after then you’re going to want to have some kind of pitch within your freesource.

For example let’s say you have a video about some special technique as your freesource, at some point in the video you’re going to want to pitch some related resource that costs money. So perhaps the free video is more of an overview of a technique and the video that costs money goes more in depth or has additional techniques.

With graphics you could offer part of a set for free, for example 10 free flat lay backgrounds…but get the whole collection of 50 for a fiver.

Seeing as what you’re giving away free is your taster you’re going to want to make sure it is damn tasty so that people want more, they want to pay for the rest. I’ve seen a lot of bloggers that want to make money this way fail because while the paid content they create is great that same level of effort hasn’t gone into the free stuff. Your freebies are like advertising for your paid content and no ones going to reach for their purse if the freebie is sub par.

Do any of you guys offer freesources on your blogs? Do you do it for subscribers or to pitch your paid products or do you just give it all away for nothing?