ORM Ebook - Free Or Paid
Glen Allsopp / 
21 Comments / 
March 31st, 2008 / 
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Update: - The Online Reputation Management eBook is now available!
I’m going to release the Online Reputation Management Ebook - The Guide to Monitoring and Managing your Reputation Online. It’s currently well over 40 pages and would love some advice on whether people think it should be free or cost a fee.
Here is a sample of the up and coming ebook cover:
My Personal Thoughts
Free
- More likely to get links from people
- Gives the possibility of attracting more clients
- Becoming more established as an authority
- Gives the product little value, otherwise why would I give it away?
Paid
- Still the possibility of getting a decent amount of links
- Can still get clients from the reviews of the book if people enjoy it
- Still seen as an authority on the subject
- Gives the product more value, but might get less people reading it
- Can Set up an affiliate program that might push more sales
If I do decide to sell, I don’t see it being anymore than $20-$30 and it will be updated over time.
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it’s always a tough call for free vs paid. I would think that maybe you give a sample chapter away for free to gather a bunch of links and get people talking. Give a few copies away to bloggers to review to gather more links and create more buzz. But then have a money page that sells the full book. I think you then get the best of both worlds
I don’t know if 40 pages is not too long. Have you heard about the $7 ebooks/scripts? It’s inexpensive, yet you can earn some money, people who like your ebook can spread it as well and even though they get the $7 (or $10 or what ever) you will get the emails from the people buying.
I have tons of free ebooks on my hard drive. Don’t know when or if I’m gonna read them.
Hope this helps, Xarah
First of all, I’m glad to hear about the eBook. I’m willing to pay, but around $10, not $20-$30. I expect the eBook to contain valuable and concise information that I can’t find in blogs and forums (for free). If it’s at least 40 pages long, perhaps you should consider splitting it to 2-3 books (one will focus on monitoring and one on managing or something of that sort) and each can cost around $7-$10.
Have to admit, I agree with Xarah and Hadar - there are many e-books available now and while I’m willing to pay up to $10 for something that may be useful, I can’t see paying 20 - 30 unless I really know the author. Maybe start small and build up?
Either way, I wish you all the best with it
As long as you earn good money via your day job and you don’t want to quit soon give the book away.
I would make the book a shorter primer, maybe cut off 10-15 pages and give it away. A free product is very useful for many purposes… encouraging subscriptions, generating leads, info for potential clients, JVs for affiliate marketers etc.
Every good marketer should have both a free product and a premium product. Save the pages you chopped away and make a more comprehensive or advanced all-in-one book that you can sell at a later stage after the first free book has been circulating for a while.
Make the premium item more substantial if you want to charge a higher rate.
Hi Glen,
You could give it away for free on a landing page where you’ll collect their name and e-mail first, then take them to an OTO page where you give them a special offer for another product at a reduced price. Or maybe charge them a small price and again take them to another OTO page where you can get an upsell on another product. I’m more for the free and gettig them on your list. If your product is good, then they’ll come back and buy from you later. JMHO
-Jonathon
Hi Glen,
Go back to your “business objective” for the answer. It would seem to me that you’re still building your reputation (you’re off to a stunning start, but seems like you want to vault into the stratosphere). Having that alpha reputation is worth more than what you’ll likely make off the book at this stage.
Plus, most of the business type books that I pay $20 bucks for are more like 200 pages. 40 pages sounds pretty short to me in that context.
So I’d give it away. Hype it, promote it, track your downloads, etc. Then maybe sell your second book.
We’re finishing up a book on social media marketing. It’s currently 185 pages. We’re going to print it in paperback, order a few hundred and give them away. Then sell it on amazon, etc, but the goal is not to make any money, but to continue to build our (hopefully growing reputation) too…
Hope it helps.
~Jim
I’d love to know when you make the book public so please add me to any email list you might have!
Hello Glen:
Welcome to the ebook world! I too am just starting to write ebooks. I want to help push this new technology since it is easier on the environment - imagine no chopping trees! Promote as much as you can and be patient since time will tell.
Agree with Maki. Give away an intro (that has value alone) and then lead into a premium version with testimonials. That lets people get to know you’re stuff a bit.
I think you should do a REM
before downloading let people decide if they would like to download it for free or make a donation. For a 40 page E-book $30 might be a bit too steep its nearly a $1 a page. I would probably pay $10 for the book if there was no reviews but if there was reviews and they were positive I would, at a stretch, pay $15.