The Cocktail Wiener Strategy for Online Business

Don't you just love those nice ladies who stand in grocery
store aisles handing out tiny food samples? Garlic sausage
hot off the griddle... the latest processed cheese food on
a cracker... cocktail weenies. I was thinking about those
ladies and how popular they are while I pondered the
marketing of my web content services.

You see, recently I decided to copy the cocktail weiner
strategy and give something away for free. I had read tons
of articles about the magic of "free" but for a long time
was skeptical about whether it would work for me... I mean,
what on earth can a writer give away free? And hasn't the
impact of that over-used four letter word worn off by now?

Apparently not.

Internet marketing kahuna Jim Daniels gives away copies of
his e-book precisely because free works. He says, "Offering
a free manual gives me an opportunity to show off my
expertise and possibly gain a few more potential prospects
and customers... If you can give it away for free, people
will remember you."

Well, I don't have an e-book to give away. But this is what
I did and what you can do, too.

My primary means of promoting my writing services is through
distributing business- and writing-related articles like this
one (a freebie in itself). At the end of each one is a short
author's tag which acts as a plug for my services. This is
the ONLY advertising I do. Until I had my cocktail wiener
epiphany, that tag read like this:

"How can you free up more of your precious time and improve
your traffic and revenues? Hire an experienced content
provider to write and regularly refresh your online material.
Heather Reimer has been a professional writer for 16 years.
She specializes in custom web content... blah, blah, blah."

I used that tag for months with pretty mediocre results. I
blamed it on the poor economy and the fact that most
webmasters have a tendency to think writing is easy and
anybody can do it, so why pay?

But that wasn't the entire problem, as I discovered when I
tweaked the tag by adding this line:

"Get a free content analysis report on your site when you
request an estimate."

Shazzam! Serious clients started taking me seriously,
overnight.

Turns out webmasters care much less about my years of
writing experience than they do about the possibility of
getting help to improve their sites and getting it on the
house. It also gives them a chance to see if I know my
stuff before they commit to hiring me.

The sex-appeal of free could work for you too. But be
prepared - there will be the inevitable lollygaggers and
time wasters. There will be cheapskates who use your
great ideas without hiring you... who take your free
samples and make a meal out of them.

It happens, it's cool, it's all part of the wonderful
world of free. As those nice grocery store ladies can
tell you, you have to dish out a LOT of cocktail wieners
before somebody buys a package.

But the point is that even the nibblers might be back
someday because your free gift left such a good taste
in their mouths. And when they do, you'll have a second
chance to get your product or service into their
shopping carts.