You find yourself at a website that looks interesting, but just not completely trustworthy. The website’s owner is offering you an enticing freebie - a special report that claims to contain the elusive solutions to your most painful problems.

But you’re worried about handing over your email address in order to get the download link. If you sign up for the freebie, by default you also end up subscribing to their mailing list. You already get enough spam, and who knows how much junk will flood your inbox if you enter your email address and click that shiny ‘Subscribe’ button?

The answer is to use a free throw-away email address from 10 Minute Mail. It’s your email inbox’s new best friend. The email address lasts only just long enough for you to get your download link. If you like the special report enough, you can would then feel safe enough to subscribe to the site’s eZine or RSS feed. If it’s a load of doggy poop, at least you haven’t sacrificed your inbox to the spam gods.

BUT…

What if you’re one of those website owners who use a downloadable freebie as an enticement to subscribe to your eZine? Isn’t the disposable email address your bitterest enemy? Are you hating me for recommending a service like 10 Minute Mail? Please don’t. I have some tips for you (and for myself, as I plan on doing exactly this).

1. Make sure your website projects a polished and professional image. Avoid the common web design mistakes. I’m thinking along the lines of multi-colored text, yellow highlighting, and lots of exclamation marks and gratuitous emphasis!!! But simple things like not using enough ‘white space’ in your layout - especially around the margins, choosing hard-to-read fonts, and cramping up the elements on your page also hurts. Look as professional and trustworthy online as you are in ‘real life’.
2. Under-promise and over-deliver. Avoid sounding too hyped-up and ‘too-good-to-be-true’ in your content. Be specific and truthful about what you have to offer.
3. Convince your visitors that your eZine is also a fantastic resource, not just a sacrifice they have to make to get your freebie. Your visitor should believe that signing up for the freebie plus the eZine is a double blessing (rather than dreading that the eZine is the ugly old chaperone that puts a real damper on your date with the drop-dead gorgeous super-model).
4. Include links to your website and to your eZine subscription form in your freebie. It should be a ’standalone’ marketing tool in its own right. Not only could your visitors use a service like 10 Minute Mail to avoid getting your eZine, but subscribers who really enjoyed the freebie might pass it around to their friends (that would be a great thing - it’s called ‘viral marketing’), and bypass the subscription process. You want to make it easy for them to get on your subscriber list now that they feel safe enough to do so.

I know of a success coach who tried to stop people from passing around his free eBooks because he wanted everyone to subscribe to his eZine first. He made a point of saying that if you shared the free eBooks with your friends, you were engaging in copyright violation and piracy.

I reckon he shot himself in the foot. Who wants to email their friends a link to a subscription form instead of just sending the PDF file? I’d feel embarrassed.

Encourage people to spread your freebies around - just make sure your freebie brings people to your site and persuade them that your eZine will be genuinely useful and interesting to them.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Since writing this post this morning, I’ve started watching an interesting marketing video on the subject of providing incentives. It has some surprising test results when comparing one test webpage with another.

photo credit: fazen

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A personal note to begin with: I haven’t been posting much this last month because I’ve been finding a new house to live in and now furnishing it and unpacking. The dust is starting to settle, but I’m going offline for about two weeks while setting up a decent internet connection, rather than limping along on Virgin Mobile Broadband (which really sucks, by the way).

When you make spelling/grammar mistakes on your website, you risk annoying your visitors (at least the ones like me who actually care about spelling and grammar). You lose credibility. And that results in lost sales when your prospects click away and go elsewhere.

Here is a great set of tips from Copyblogger…

Do You Make These Mistakes When You Write? | Copyblogger

And just for fun, here is a paragraph that makes all those mistakes. Can you spot them?

You and myself both don’t want to loose credibility online. Your website should of been different than other peoples. If I could of, I would of written my copy, two new posts and hired an editor, e.g. someone who proofread’s, last weekend.

photo credit: davitydave

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What should you do with problem clients? I keep mine in a jar… Just kidding.

On a serious note, here are some things you can do to avoid problem clients in the first place, no matter what kind of freelance work you do:

1. Don’t under-charge. People who are stingy with their money ironically want much more than they paid for. If you charge a fair price, you will attract fair clients. Don’t rip yourself off.
2. Set your boundaries at the beginning of the relationship. Clearly define what is included in your quote, and charge extra for anything extra. Know in advance what you’re prepared to do when the client wants revisions or changes to your agreement, and make that clear right up-front.
3. Divide the project into small steps, and charge the client step-by-step. You don’t move onto the next stage until the client signs off and pays for the previous stage. You won’t need to offer a money-back guarantee, you won’t have huge debts to collect, and it’s the least risky arrangement for both you and the client.

Kevin Boss wrote an article about what he learned from his early stages of being a freelance web designer. Thanks to him for including the Ashes of Problem Clients jar in his post.

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