Why Sell Something, When You Can Give It Away FREE?

A warm welcome from the Yorkshire dales, I believe the technical word for this weather we are experiencing today is “Summer”, it’s making me feel the need to go outdoors but I’ll resist the temptation whilst I write this blog post.

In todays post I’m going to look back at the events of the past few weeks, as it’s given me some food for thought, and I’m in two minds about what to do, so I’d appreciate it if you could have a read through what I’m about to write and give me your opinions.

It all started a few weeks ago when Socrates Socratous asked me if I’d consider giving away a copy of my Boomerang List Builder software to all people that signed up to his Resale Rights Fortune pre-launch list, so without much hesitation I agreed.

Why Did I Agree To It?

Quite simply because I knew the launch would be huge, and if I had a “soft opt-in” in place, I would get a ton of new subscribers – and I did!

Take a look at the new size of my mailing list:

And I would like to point out that this is probably one of the only times I’ll ever show you a screen shot of my mailing list numbers, so make the most of it!

And I’m not posting the numbers in a “my penis is bigger than yours” “my Dad is better than your Dad” sort of way, I’m just showing you what I gained from giving it away for free – a ton of new mailing list subscribers.

So fast forward a couple of weeks to the end of the launch, and I’m still getting a few new subscribers each day from Resale Rights Fortune.

So here’s the dilemma, what would happen if I got rid of the $47 Boomerang List Builder price tag, and gave it away for free ALL THE TIME?

If I gave it away for free, I’d be losing upwards of $10,000 each year in sales, but I’d be building my mailing list like there’s no tomorrow, and I could implement a OTO type system so there would still be the potential there to make money from OTO sales, and it would still let affiliates earn commissions for promoting.

I know as a customer you will be leaning towards the “Free” option – and I don’t blame you! But put yourself in my shoes, what would you go for?

Would you keep everything as it is and charge $47 to anyone who wishes to purchase a copy of the software, and have a steady trickle of sales every month?

Or would you give away the software for free in return for an email address, so you’d lose out on the income from sales, but you’d be building a huge mailing list that would potentially be a much bigger earner in the years to come?

And I’ve just had a brainwave…WE SHALL HAVE A POLL!

Possibly the first ever poll on the El Passo Blog, what a joyous occasion – so go ahead and vote in the poll, then tell me what you think in the comments section below!

Welll….we were going to have a poll until the plugin decided to stop working, so we’ll have to make do with just leaving your thoughts in the comments section instead, sorry about that, I was really excited about the 1st El Passo Blog poll as well 🙁

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

Regards,
Dan

Why Adding Blog Comments Does Nothing For SEO

Why Adding Blog Comments Does Nothing For SEO

Hello readers, this week I have a double whammy (My spell checker doesn’t like the word but i’m leaving it in!) of articles for you. The first article that you are reading now is about dispelling a myth that leaving comments on WordPress blogs is a good way to get a back-link to your website.

The second article, that you can find underneath this one is about a nasty run in I’ve had with 1&1 Internet and a debt collection agency.

But like all chronological things, we will start at the beginning with the WordPress/SEO article.

I’m sure you have already heard this saying many times but I’ll post it again:

“Get As Many Back-links To Your Site To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking”

The above statement is 100% correct, BUT what isn’t correct is when people advise you that the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to get good quality back-links is by posting comments on blogs and entering your website URL. Here’s an example of a comment with a “back-link” made by one of my readers, Omar Martin.

So you’d think that when the Google Bot visited my blog and looked at the comments, the Bot would follow Omar’s link out of the blog and back onto his site. Normally this would be the case, but not with a WordPress blog!

By default, WordPress adds a “nofollow” attribute to the URL’s you enter in your comments. This means that when the search engine bots see your links, they make a wide birth and totally ignore them. Don’t believe me, go look at the source code of a WordPress blog, and you’ll see the “nofollow” attribute, this is an example, again from Omars comment:

So the next time you see somebody saying that adding comments to a WordPress blog is an easy way to get a back-link, give them a slap round the face and send them to this post. Well, maybe don’t do the slap bit, but do feel free to send them to this page.

Despite all of this technical mumbo-jumbo, branding your name with your website link is still a great “Old Fashioned” way to get your website noticed. I don’t know about you, but whenever I read an interesting comment on a blog, more times than not I’ll click on that persons link and check out their site!

Thanks for reading this post, feel free as always to leave a comment – You won’t get a back-link but you will get a nice warm feeling inside! (Allegedly)

Cheers,
Dan

P.S. Next week – How to take off the nofollow attribute!