Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

Nathan Hangen is a blogger and digital content creator who is finishing his commitment to the military next month and taking the plunge into full-time online content sales. I came across his site after seeing a comment he made on another blog. What interested me most was what I saw him doing on his site. He was offering a paid E-book but also offering it as a free download.

I was curious as to what his results where and why he decided to offer a free version alongside the paid version. In this interview, he answers that question and many others. I ask him about his goals for selling paid content, his past experiences in doing so, and what he thinks about “launch fever” that seems to be overtaking the internet marketing world.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Related Links:

- Nathan’s website
- Nathan’s site designer – Kimb Jones
- Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income
- David Risley
- Chris Guillebeau

Transcript:

Tim Bourquin: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to my interview here at MemberCon.com. We’re going to be speaking with Nathan Hangen. And I got he got my attention because I saw his comment on somebody else’s blog. So I went over to his site and took a look at what he was doing, and he is doing a lot of the things that we talk about here at MemberCon. But one of the things that was really interesting to me is that he sells an eBook, but alongside it, he’s got a free version that anybody can download that is set up a little bit differently. We’re going to talk to him about that today and his whole business too. So Nathan, thanks for joining me on the phone today.

Nathan Hangen: No problem. I’m happy to be here.

Tim Bourquin: I’m going to jump right into this and then we’ll get a little background on it in a minute, but you’ve got an ebook that you sell on your website that you’ve got a paid one that people can pay for, but then you’ve got pretty much the same content right below with a link for a free download. Can you talk about how you made that decision to do both of those?

Nathan Hangen: Sure, absolutely. To be honest, I talk a lot about experimenting on my blog and that’s what this was. It’s really just an experiment. Number one, it’s not original content. It’s a combination of old posts mixed with some new thoughts. And so I didn’t feel right. I wasn’t sure how I felt to be honest about pricing, and I couldn’t come up with or have a price that I was happy with.

So, at the same time, I also wanted to test the responsiveness of my audience, see who was there for free stuff, see who was there for me and who might be willing to pay more. And so what I did was I basically created this as a free product. No opt-in required, you know. If you want to come and get it, I paid money, 150 bucks for the design, and I said “Come and get it if you want it.” But if I also offered more with the premium version. You can get access to my Members Area. You can talk to me and I have some premium podcast there and just a bunch of stuff, not a ton but enough. And so I said you can come and get that. You can get the premium version for 10 bucks and so I wanted to see how many people would opt for the premium versus the free, and I thought that would give me a good test for how responsive my audience was to what I was doing.

Tim Bourquin: And what did you find out? Did people pay for it?

Nathan Hangen: Yeah. To be honest, I didn’t expect a lot and so I only think I got a lot in the beginning primarily because I didn’t really pitch it. And if you look at my blog even now, it’s kind of hard to find it. And it’s almost intentional. I didn’t want it to be like a launch or anything. But people are paying for it. I think right now, we’re at about nothing huge. I think I’ve got 30 people that have paid for it and they’re in my Members Area. I just raised the price to kind of I like the people that are there and I’d be happy if we didn’t have any more. So a lot of people took the free option and that’s okay.

Tim Bourquin: You’re in the military. You’re going to be out in a month. You’re going to try and do your website full-time. Thanks for your service by the way. I appreciate that. So, where do you make the majority of your revenue then with your blog that you intend to do this full-time after?

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creating content, membership pricing, selling content online internet marketing, Kimb Jones, Nathan Hangen, Pat Flynn