You Must Sell Information To Make People Value It

Suppose you have vital information that will transform people's lives. You want everyone to benefit. You're afraid that if you charge money for it, some people will be unable to afford the information, which is probably true. So should you give away the information for free? Bad idea -- if you don't sell information, those who get it will be much less likely to pay attention to it.

In this society, we are accustomed to paying for things. Generally we believe that price indicates quality. To get more, we expect to pay more. So if you give out information without charging for it, don't expect people to value it.

People are willing to make good deals, however. If the price of something is high, people will love to get it for a discount. If you really want to get the word out, set a high price for the information, and let people steal it from you. It can spread instantly around the Internet this way. And for those people who are honest, you can occasionally offer it at big discounts.

Consider those pitiable people who try to urge their special knowledge upon other people -- the streetcorner evangelists, the conspiracy theorists handing out their pamphlets, the people holding their picket signs. They are ignored and despised.

I met a man at a party who handed me an audio recording, imagining that it would change my life. When I got away from him, I threw the recording in the trash. I had not the slightest inclination to have my life changed by him. If on the other hand, he had been charging $98 for it, I would have been curious about what made the information worth that. And if I did indeed buy the recording, I would certainly have tried to get my money's worth out of it.

I've met people at poetry readings, handing out chapbooks of their verse. They say "Don't take it unless you are going to read it." They'd do much better to charge a dollar for it. A dollar would cover their costs of duplicating it and would make people more likely to look at it. Five dollars would be even better.

All this said, it is also necessary to give information away, which is to say, to exchange the information for something other than money. If you want people to sign up for your mailing list, you need to give them something to make it worth their while. If you want people to keep receiving and to look at your e-mails, you need to be giving them something that will make it worth their while. In these cases, the exchange is clear to both sides, and remember, human interactions are built upon exchanges, not one-way donations.


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For more information, visit the Online Money-making Opportunity web site, a growing collection of ecourses, ebooks, and "mini-zines" showing speakers, writers, and self-employed professionals how to "monetize" the web. The collection is being gathered and maintained by Dr. Christopher, a Colorado public speaker and seminar leader.