AP 0257: Is the Sample of My Book Hurting My Sales?

AskPat 257 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 257 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Before I get to the question today from Guillermo, and also mention today's amazing sponsor, I do want to thank all of you for all of your support for me, Chris Ducker's, first brand new podcast, One day Business Breakthrough, which you can find at 1DayBB.com. This was a small event that me and Chris Ducker used to do together, and we are taking the format of that event, which is completely successful, to a podcast. And since you're all podcast listeners, I feel like especially because you're AskPat listeners, you would enjoy this show. Because we feature a real-life entrepreneur's struggles, and then me and Chris go back for 15 minutes talking, going back and forth, brainstorming, strategerizing, figuring out what we can do to help this person break through those struggles in what we call our “15-minute hot seat.” So go ahead, check that out, 1DayBB.com, and we think you'll like it. So thank you for all of you who have listened to it and have expressed your love for the show already. I couldn't be more thrilled, so thank you for that.

Now, before we get to today's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.com. If you are a solo business or just working by yourself, or maybe you have a number of people working with you and you're looking to expand … you're looking to grow your business, add that new person to help you take your business to the next level. Instead of wasting your time going to all the different websites out there and posting that job description, all you have to do is go to ZipRecruiter.com and it will post it to over 50 different job sites for you, with just a couple clicks, and they find and highlight the best candidates for you. So, just making your life so much easier. You can find that right candidate and take your business to the next level. Its free, which is awesome. So if you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat, you can go ahead and check that out. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com/pat.

Awesome. Now, let's get to today's question from Guillermo.

Guillermo: Hello, Pat. I hope you're well. My name is Guillermo, and following your advice, I wrote an ebook on a topic that I really like. And my question is, should I offer a free sample of the ebook? When people read it, they really like it, but when people download the free sample, they don't seem to eventually buy it. So, I'm not sure if you have statistics or advice on this … I should offer the free sample? Or just leave it … you know, either get it or leave it type of thing? So, thank you so much, Pat. Bye bye.

Pat Flynn: Guillermo, thank you so much for the question. First of all, congratulations on your ebook. I am right in the middle of writing a book as well, so I know how amazing that feeling is to finish a book, 'cause I finished a couple in the past, and I'm really close to finishing this next one. A lot of cool things ahead, and for those of you who are following my book-writing process and my book-writing journey, you'll hear more about what this book is and my future for publishing and all that stuff. It's really exciting, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

But anyway, this is about Guillermo. Guillermo, you have an ebook, and you want to help promote it. And to do that, you are giving away a free portion of your book, might be the first chapter, or a little piece of it. You're giving that away for free, for people to check out beforehand, to hopefully get them excited and get them interested so they will then go on and buy the full thing.

Now, you're running into an issue, and again I'm just paraphrasing what you just said. You're running into an issue where people who got the book, they say they love it, but the people who get the free sample, they're not buying the book. Now you had asked for some statistics and things like that, and I can't really give you any statistics, 'cause its going to differ from niche, person to person, offer to offer, book to book, and things like that. But I will say, that there's a lot of factors involved here. So you cannot just say that this is just not working right now. I mean, obviously, it's not working, but we cannot just say that and that be the end and work on something else.

I think it's important why this isn't working, and like I said, there's a lot of factors involved. And to truly understand why this isn't working the way it should, because this does work. I've gotten a lot of advice from a lot of other authors, successful authors, who say, “Give away a free chapter of your book.” And it works. It's important to figure out why this isn't. And if you've given away this sample of your book to subscribers, and that's not working, then you have a good opportunity to reach out to those subscribers. And it's going to be tough; it's going to be a little uncomfortable. You're going to have to let your guard down a little bit, but that's how you find out exactly what's going on. So you go and ask these people who have viewed your sample and just be honest with them, “Hey, people who've gotten the book love it. For some reason, the free sample hasn't made you compelled enough to download the full version. May I ask how come you haven't made that jump yet?” Of course, you can phrase it in your own voice, and ask it a different way a lot better than me, actually, but I'm just kinda thinking off the top of my head right now. That's going to tell you a lot of insight, and you never know, it might just be that one person who perhaps has been a part of your brand for awhile, they love what you do, and they're willing to share all that information with you. And it can be very enlightening and life changing to hear from those people who are in your brand, who are going through what you want them to try and do, to tell you exactly what's going on and tell you the truth on things. ‘Cause its hard to see from your point of view, as a person putting all of this together, and you might find out, for example, that it might just be a simple little thing. It might be somebody who says, “Wow, well, you know what, I just forgot about it.” What? Then you're like, “Okay, well, why did you forget about it?” Well, maybe you didn't have your autoresponder set up in a way to tag those people back or email them back a week later asking them how that free sample was. There's a lot of things you could do there to improve this situation, Guillermo, which I would recommend you do first before you dump this idea perhaps and try something else.

So, there's a lot of things you can do. You want to first make sure … this is stuff off the top of my head to help you out here … in that free sample, you want to make sure that free sample is one of the best chapters as well. It doesn't necessarily always have to be the first chapter, and I think it might even be intriguing to try and give away one of your middle chapters, perhaps the one that they might even find they're going to get some results from. And it might be interesting, because it's going to be just a little bit of taste of what they have. And sometimes the first chapter isn't always the best one. It's like those shows on TV that take one or two episodes to get into. That might be the first chapter for a lot of books out there, including yours. So maybe you give them some of the middle part of your book that is actually going to help them with stuff and make it a quick small win that they can actually get results from, at which point, they are going to be eager to get the rest of your book.

Now, the second thing is, you want to make sure that it is easy to get the rest of your book too. So your free sample should also act as a promotional marketing effort for your free book in terms of, what happens on the last page when they get to the last page? Do you just end and that's it? Or is there a full-page ad in the back for the rest of your book? Maybe you could even include a coupon or something. Or another free bonus for people who purchase at that moment in time through your free sample. Going to a special landing page, for example, with your video that thanks people: “Hey, thank you for watching my free sample. If you click the button below you're going to get the book, but here's a coupon code, or here's a free bonus that you get if you send in your receipt,” and things like that, and, “This is just for you for viewing this free sample. Nobody else is getting this.” I think that could help with conversions as well.

Another thing you could do is related to your email autoresponder, like I was talking about earlier. So, hopefully you're getting people to send in their email addresses in exchange for your free sample, and when they do that, they get put into an autoresponder sequence where X number of days later, maybe it's a week later … and I like the whole week later thing. This is a sort of side note. I like a week later, because we know that they've subscribed during that day at that time, and chances are that that's a time and day and part of the week when they are available. And so, when you send them an email, they're more likely to open it at that time. Just a little small hint for you there. It's not to say you should only send weekly, but its just a fun little thing. If you have to choose one day within a month to send an email out to a new subscriber, it would be the very next week at the very same time, the very same day.

Anyway, going back to the email auto-responder sequence: You want to send them a message after you've given them the access to this free guide, and say, “Hey, <name>, how did you enjoy the sample? If you liked it, purchase here.” Or even before the ask, I would give even more. I would say, “Well, you just read chapter 8, which is all about subject X and Y, and Z, did you know that if you include da da da … I mean, you could just add even more value and just extend that chapter even more, and then you could say, “I talk about these things in the rest of the book. That puts this all together for you. If you are interested in this book, here's a coupon code, here's bonuses you get, here's a link.” Now, that's a lot of things working for you to help promote that book from that one free sample that you're giving away. And so, chances are that you will increase your conversions if you do one, if not all of those things. I would recommend doing all of those things as well. Of course, if you have those email lists set up, you definitely don't want to keep emailing people who have already purchased your book. So you're going to have to do a little bit of thinking there as well and moving people around on different lists if they make purchases. I don't know what cart you're using. Some of those things could be automated, but you get the idea. So, hopefully this is helpful for you.

Thank you so much for checking in and asking the question, Guillermo. I appreciate it. An AskPat t-shirt will be headed your way. My assistant will email you very soon to collect your information so we can send it over to you. And for those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like to potentially feature here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page, even through your mobile device.

And, of course, Id like to thank again today's sponsor, which is ZipRecruiter.com, making it super-easy to higher anybody in your business. Instead of going to all the different job sites out there, you just have to go to one spot. ZipRecruiter.com/Pat. You enter in your information for who you're looking for to just expand your business and the right candidate that you need, and they're going to go out there and find them for you. Instead of you going out to every single site and worrying about who these people are, they're going to find the best candidates for you. So, again, it's ZipRecruiter.com/Pat, and that is completely free for you as a user, somebody who's looking to grow your business.

Thank you so much for listening in today again, and as always, I like to end the day with a little quote. Today's quote is from John Wooden. He says, “Make each day your masterpiece.” And whenever you're listening to this, what else could you do today? Or what have you done today to make today your masterpiece? Every day's a blank canvas, guys. It's up to you. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat.