How to Give Away Free Stuff & Make Money! Author: Max Diamond Copyright 2013 by Max Diamond Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
Table of Contents.................................................................................................................3 Introduction ..................................................................................................................4 Chapter 1: Getting Started ...................................................................................................9 Chapter 2: Finding Free Stuff ............................................................................................23 Chapter 3: Building Your Membership .............................................................................28 Chapter 4: Marketing .........................................................................................................30 Chapter 5: Enhance Your Service......................................................................................44 Chapter 6: Special Promotions ..........................................................................................48 Chapter 7: Premium Service ..............................................................................................50
Introduction How To Give Away FREE STUFF & Make Money! The ultimate guide on helping people to find freebies and savings, while making a nice income for yourself Finally, a business... 1. That is simple to set-up 2. That cost's nothing to get started 3. That you can run from anywhere in the world 4. That is extremely satisfying to be a part of, and one that will make you feel you are REALLY helping those people who need it most! 5. That will earn you money day after day, week after week, year after year Finding and giving away free stuff is very rewarding. You are genuinely helping people to make ends meet. This book will show you all you need to know, to get started in the amazing world of freebies! It will teach you how to: Find free stuff, Build your membership, Earn an income from affiliate companies and advertisers, Promote your service, Get free marketing, and be up and running within a week! I can even provide a 'Premium Service' (Chapter 7) where I will get you fully setup and ready to go and provide you with, training, email support and a list of freebies every week! I have been in the business of finding and providing free stuff for almost 10 years. It has become somewhat of a passion for me. I get a thrill out of finding a few gems each week, then sharing them with the membership. I currently manage over 100,000 members and visitors, through 750 groups and clubs. I also look after 8 freebie sites, check out the 3 samples below:
http://freebiesave.org http://clubfreebie.com http://freebiemaster.net
My members know that I work hard to get them the ‘goodies’ and over the years, many members have become great friends and real supporters of what I do. The
membership continues to grow on a daily basis and I put out 3 pages of freebies every week, all by myself! Believe me… once you have created and shared your first freebie page, you will become addicted to the business. The ‘thank you’ letters, alone, will spur you on! There is never a shortage in ‘paid’ advertising either, as many companies are hungry to get their product information out to the membership. I simply make sure that what they are offering is a genuine freebie, sample, coupon etc, before I add it to my list and share it with the members. Most advertisers work through affiliate companies, and these affiliate companies work hard to make sure you get what you need for your members and visitors. When I create a page of freebies, I generally add 3 or 4 paid adverts in the list, and this is the way you will earn your income. I also do ‘special freebie packages’ with my members, in return for donating a few dollars to our service, once a month. You might also want to consider a ‘subscription’ service, via Paypal, where members pay a small amount each month or year, as we do for the ‘Supporters Club’ service, provided at Freebiemaster.net You could also contact your local businesses, to see if they would like a monthly advert on your web page for a fee, or if they would like to offer your members a discount voucher for shopping with them, which you would of course charge them for providing the service! While I provide an International freebie service, there is a lot of merit in providing a more local web page, as you can add tons of local info on your site, plus have ‘items for sale’ section and even use your group like a ‘Freecycle.org’ service, where people can give away items free, that they no longer need! The important thing is to establish a real community feeling within your membership. This way, your business will grow very fast indeed! Since 2008 (after the crash!), more and more people are turning towards freebie sites, or places that can help them save money. There are now many poor folk out there who really need someone to help them along. This is where you come in!
Max Diamond Author & Freebiemaster
Chapter 1: Getting Started
You will need just 4 basic things to get you started in the freebie business 1. A free web page 2. A free membership mailing group 3. A Paypal account 4. A few affiliate accounts
Part 1: Creating a free web page! There are many websites out there that offer free web page creation. I personally like: http://weebly.com as it is stupidly simply to use, with its simple drag-anddrop page creation facilities. Even a complete novice can master their service within a couple of hours. You need no web page making experience AT ALL with Weebly!
Watch their video to see just how easy it is to make a website! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6iqVxaALas&feature=player_embedded Here is a web page containing a few freebies, to give you an idea of what it can look like: http://www.freebiesave.org/latest-freebies.html You can always buy a domain name from Weebly in the future, rather than have their name in your URL (as we have done above), but this is not so important until you get your new business in motion.
Here is another sample page using their domain in the URL: http://freebiegift.weebly.com
Weebly offers a great choice of free website designs when you get started, and you can simply choose one of their templates, and be up and running in a few minutes! Weebly provides full and easy to understand instructions, to help you create the website you want, then it’s just a matter of playing around with their additional features, so that you end up with a terrific website that your members will enjoy visiting! Part 2. Creating a free membership mailing group There are several social network sites on the web that can provide you with mailing group facilities. I use both Google Groups and Yahoo Groups, however, I find Yahoo Groups to be the best at getting the mail delivered to the members. http://groups.yahoo.com
Instructions for creating a Yahoo Group http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&y=PROD_GRPS&locale=en_US& id=SLN2432&pir=npzW69dibUlDGAmneYLH9PVrbLi6MqAIdUhV0yL0IWgUK8U 16b2SdkCiQinOqkXQqdiDDHo5rCgXHSmKaVHKSQyWtg_r0w-http://groups.google.com
Instructions for creating a Google Group http://support.google.com/groups/answer/46368?hl=en Setting up a group is very simple. More importantly, it is the best way to ensure you get your messages delivered to your membership, as both Google and Yahoo are ‘whitelisted’ with most spam filters! After you have created your group, Yahoo, for example, offers you the html code for a member’s join box to put on your website. This way, visitors to your website, can easily join your group. You can also change the settings of your group, creating a ‘newsletter’ service only (members cannot post messages to the group) or if you want more interaction from your members, you can set it so that they can indeed message each other, although, I recommend that you ‘moderate’ the messages, before they are posted to the group (this will stop any ‘spam’ getting though). If you decide to operate a local freebie service for you own town or city, I would certainly allow members to use the service to advertise items for sale, or to be given away free (like Freecycle), as this will certainly enhance your service, and
as long the members are getting either a freebie, or a something cheap, they will be happy! Running a Yahoo Group is very easy, and there are a lot of settings you can change (even the colour schemes, pictures etc) to suit your group. I actually built up my first 10,000 members within a few months, and what I liked most was the fact that I could email ALL of them at a click of a button, any time I needed to! Part 3. Setting up a Paypal account To do any real business on the web, you need a Paypal account. Most affiliate companies that will be providing you with the ad’s to place in your freebie lists, will generally pay you through Paypal, so you will need to set this up ASAP. Simply go to http://paypal.com and apply for an account if you don’t already have one. After your account is set up, make sure you verify it as soon as possible (Paypal will give you instructions on how to do this), as this is important for establishing your credibility with the affiliate companies and members alike! Part 4. Becoming an affiliate I personally use a number of different affiliate companies, in order to widen my choice of freebies, offers and coupons. When applying to become an affiliate, make sure that your web page is up and running and has plenty of content, before you apply, as they may check your website before letting you put ad’s on it. This is not the case with all affiliate companies, but it is better to be prepared than not! Here are some of the affiliate companies I use to earn money though my members. Most of these are directed at USA customers: http://logicalmedia.com
https://partners.mysavings.com/affiliate_signup.html?super_affiliate_code=CD1
http://clickbank.com
http://websponsors.com
http://coprosper.com
http://leadermarkets.hasoffers.com
http://uk.affiliatewindow.com/homepage/publishers/ (UK Offers)
There are literally thousands of affiliate companies out there but many share the same offers, so even being a member of 3 or 4 is enough to give you a variety of ad’s to promote. When I promote offers from these affiliate companies, I tend to stick with text ad’s, as I can mix them in with my usual list of freebies (when I create a new page of freebies, I usually put 2 or 3 paying ads within the list). Affiliate companies will usually pay you on a net 30 day basis, and they can do this by check, wire transfer or to you, via their own Paypal account.
Chapter 2: Finding Free Stuff
There are literally thousands of sites on the web where you can find freebies, samples, coupons and links to free movies, software, games, books, music, magazines and lots more I actually wrote a book last year that contains around 600 freebie links to sites that give away stuff. This book will help you get started, and you can download it free at: http://www.freebiesave.org/free-book.html
I generally use a handful of sites to find goodies for my members:
http://mysavings.com
http://afreebieempire.com
http://www.hotukdeals.com/all/freebies/hot (UK Freebies)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigitaltext&field-keywords=0.00&x=14&y=20 (Amazon books USA)
http://www.ereaderiq.co.uk/free/ (UK Books)
Once you get used to searching for free stuff, you will end up with so much of it, you will wonder where to put it! I recommend that when you find sites that, for example, offer children’s colouring pages for free etc, all year round, you put them into a master list and have this available on its own web page on your site, for members to use like a reference library. This will keep your members coming back to your website!
Chapter 3: Building Your Membership
Once the word gets around, it won’t take long before you start to see your Yahoo Group fill up with new members. Giving away free stuff will do this with very little marketing, as your members will start to tell their family and friends about your service! With Yahoo groups, you can also use their ‘Invite’ link in the group’s menu to invite up to 50 people a day. This is a great way to invite your own family and friends!
I suggest that you place your Yahoo Group join box (you can get the code for this in the ‘Promote’ link in the left hand menu of your Yahoo Group) at the top or bottom of each page you create on your website, with the words above saying: Join our FREE group and Grab The Latest Freebies!
It is important not to bombard your members with too many emails through the group. It is better to send out 2 or 3 emails a week, notifying them of the latest selection of freebies you have posted on your website
Chapter 4: Marketing
There are so many ways to promote your new freebie site on the web, and I will go over the ones I use almost every day. We’ll start with the free marketing options first! Firstly, make sure you submit each of your web page URL’s to Google, as this will get you into the search engines: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?pli=1
With every new page of freebies I create, I copy the info into a Microsoft Word document, making sure that all the links are ‘live’ (I generally copy the list of freebies off my website, then paste them directly into a new Word document. This way all the link are ‘clickable’). I then add a picture of my logo to the top of the page and then go to ‘Save As’ and save the document as a PDF file.
Once I have done this, I submit the PDF to 7 really good PDF sites, all of which have people looking at these documents, all the time. It doesn’t take long to do, but you will get a lot of new members this way, as long as you remember to put a link to your website or Yahoo Group on the Word page, before you convert it to a PDF document! Here are the 7 PDF submission sites to use (create a free account with all of them): http://www.slideshare.net/
http://www.free.yudu.com/
http://www.calameo.com/
http://www.scribd.com/
http://issuu.com/
https://drive.google.com/
http://pdfcast.org/
Remember, every time you submit a PDF page this way, they also get listed in the search engines, like Google etc. This is known as ‘seeding’ and the more pages you create, the more chance you have at getting new members into your club! Here is a couple of examples of one of my pages made in PDF: http://www.scribd.com/doc/124070604/Freebies-06-Feb-2013 http://www.slideshare.net/freebiesave/freebies-08-jan-2013 Twitter Create a Twitter account and post each of the freebies you found in separate tweets, not forgetting to put your website URL at the end of each tweet! http://twitter.com Stumbleupon
Another free service to help you build members! Simply submit you new page URL to the site: http://stumbleupon.com
Digg Once again, you can submit your news URL to this site freely! http://digg.com
Pinterest If you have a page of free books on your website, with the pictures, join Pinterest and you will be able to ‘pin’ each of the pictures (with a link to your website!) free! http://pinterest.com
Tumblr Here is another great site to submit your new page links to, plus pics, video and a lot more! http://www.tumblr.com/
YouTube I create video’s and slides to go on YouTube, as this also gets me more members, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ECAXD9AIk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffd-cgkGqD4 You could easily create a weekly video with you telling people of the free stuff you found that week with a link to your website in the description below the video. Make a good video like this, and you will get a large following! Flyers, Posters & Business Cards There is no simpler way to promote your new freebie service, than put up posters or hand flyers & business cards. You can gain thousands of new members this way! All they need say is:
FREE STUFF For Everyone! Join our Free Club Today! http://www.freebiesave.org This is a cheap & yet effective marketing method for your website. VideoPostcard.biz Here is a great service if you become a VIP member with them. Simply find a great YouTube video (funny, interesting or even related to saving money etc) then add it to a VideoPostcard with a banner of your website and a link to your website in the message area, then post it to a ton of great places. Easy and effective! http://videopostcard.biz
This is part of ‘seeding’ your business for the future, almost like submitting your site and all its individual pages to the search engines, like Google etc, eventually, everything you have submitted will be found by many new people! Once you are a VIP member of VideoPostcard, you are not limited to the number of video’s you can send out (I actually created and sent over 50 in a few hours!). Although some places you post these to, like Stumbleupon, will only allow 10 posts a day, there are still many sites that will take whatever you throw at them! Also, each VideoPostcard has its own counter on it, so that you can see quickly how many people viewed the individual VideoPostcard’s, which can help you with choosing video’s in the future. Lastly, you will be amazed at the hits you get when one of these VideoPostcard’s goes viral!
Chapter 5: Enhance Your Service
1. YouTube Video’s I talked about the benefits of YouTube earlier, however, placing YouTube video’s on your new website, on a special page containing video’s with all sorts of money saving tip’s, couponing, freebie collecting, DIY etc, is quite a nice feature for you to have. Just do a simple search in YouTube, and you will find thousands of great videos If you decide to make your own video’s (easy to do!), then make sure you create your own YouTube Channel so that you can gain subscribers
2. Chat Room or Forum It is easy to add a chat room or forum to one of your web pages. It cost’s nothing to do, and will certainly get your members interacting with each other. I have used these websites in the past: Free Forums http://nabble.com
Free Chat Rooms http://xat.com/SupportersClub
You could use the forum, for example, to allow members to post their freebies (like the recycle business at Freecycle, where people give away the items they don’t need!), or to post items for sale in a ‘Bargain Basement’ sub forum Both the sites above will provide you with the html code to place on your web page, so that the forum or chat room will instantly appear when the page is opened.
3. Free tool to make things look and work better If you check out one of my websites http://www.freebiesave.org/latestfreebies.html, you will see that the list of freebies does not show the URL’s. What you see is a text link, that when clicked, goes to the website directly, and more importantly, it opens the website in a new page. This stops people leaving your website (which you don’t want them to do!) to check out each freebie. In the old days, I just used to write a line of text about the freebie, then put the URL below it You can do much the same with the Weebly page creation facilities. Simply write your line of text, then, highlight the complete line and in the small drop down menu you will see appear, click on the symbol that looks like the number 8 (but
laying down!), and you can then insert the URL for the offer, and select it to open in a new window. This will make the whole line of text ‘clickable’ 4. Making Friends It took me quite a while to realise the importance of keeping in touch with my members on a more personal note. Now I have a world full of new friends, and although I don’t get bombarded with emails (as they know I am busy finding goodies for them!) they often get in touch to either thank me for what I do, or to request that I find a special item for them. I think this is one the most rewarding things about what I do, and it certainly motivates me when I get a nice email, or when I can find that special freebie for someone! The thing to remember is that when your members become friends, they will always stay with your service. I have thousands of members at the moment that have been with me for almost 10 years!
Chapter 6: Special Promotions
This is a very important chapter, which will help you to earn more money! When one of the affiliate companies I am a member of, offer a great ad for my membership, I will send it to the members as a solo email, in between their usual newsletters, for example, here is a letter I sent out recently to my members: Subject: Complimentary Sample of Amora Coffee Message: Dear Members Here is a great sample offer from Amora coffee. Simply click here or on the picture below and claim your sample. This offer is only available to members in the USA or Canada
Regards Max Club Admin
This ad generated a nice income for the club ($1 commission for each applicant) from the affiliate company, and the members were thrilled to get the sample! The response for these ‘solo’ messages is always far greater than mixing the ad within the daily freebie lists. I always include a picture (generally a 300x250 banner of the offer), which is supplied by the affiliate company, to enhance the solo message. To give you an idea of what can be generated by these solo mailings, when I first started with the freebie business, I had 10,000 members, I would send out a solo message, and would earn anywhere between $300 and $1000 per ad! So if you find a good offer, like the coffee sample above, that is going to pay you $1 per applicant via the affiliate company, send it out in a solo message! You should however, still add it to your freebie lists (this is important for new visitors to your website, that have yet to become members!). Remember, a few of these ‘solo’ ads each month will make a real difference to your income!
Chapter 7: Premium Service
This final chapter of the book is for those people that would you like me to provide the following extra services: • Create and set-up your free website, so it's ready to go (and teach you how to simply update it!) • Set-up your Yahoo mailing group and create and add a graphic image • Give you ongoing marketing and promotion help • Send you the general freebies we find, EVERY WEEK for 12 months, while you get settled in to your new business! • Provide email support The cost of this premium service for just $199 If your time is limited, or you would just prefer to have the work done for you, this is a great opportunity to help you get into the freebie business, without the headaches. With our premium service you will know that you are not alone in this venture, we will help you along the way and provide you with the latest tip's on marketing and how to use them, how to get more members and increase your profits. You will be able to email us directly with any questions you might have, and we will provide you with the tools to make your new business FLY! For more info go to: http://freebiesave.org/premium.html