The Free Guide

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the subject is a gift given freely, at enormous cost, to people who did not want it.

Two traders give a thing away,
Both ask a name, both hope they'll stay.
One sends a book that takes a week,
One sends the answer that they seek.
One list is fat and never buys,
One's small and orders. Tell me why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the knowledge, all together now, was equally good. Both had been told, correctly, that they should offer something free in exchange for an address, and both set about it in the same fortnight.

The first spent three weeks writing a guide. Forty pages, everything he knew, properly laid out, with a cover that cost eighty pounds. He was rather proud of it, and he had every right to be: it was the best thing anybody in that trade had written that year.

Nine hundred people downloaded it. Perhaps forty read past the second page. He knows this because the thing sat in nine hundred download folders being meant-to-be-read, which is where most free books live and die, and the fact that his was excellent made no difference at all to the folder it was sitting in.

Worse than the reading was the list. A free book on a broad subject attracts everyone who finds the subject interesting: students, the merely curious, three of his competitors, and a great many people who will never buy anything from anyone. So when he wrote to that list a month later with something to sell, almost nobody moved, and he concluded that email doesn't work. He had built a list of people who liked reading about the problem rather than people who had it.

The second firm did something that took an afternoon. She had noticed, over the years, the one question that arrives immediately before somebody buys: the small, urgent, practical one that has an actual answer. In her trade it was how much do I need and what does it cost me if I get it wrong. So she made the thing that answers it: one sheet, with the numbers already worked out, the common mistakes listed, and a space to write your own figures in.

Not many people wanted it, compared with nine hundred. But everybody who wanted it had the problem that afternoon, which is precisely what made them worth having. They used it the same day, most of them within ten minutes. Several wrote back with a question, because a sheet with your own figures written on it generates questions, whereas a book generates a vague intention to read it at the weekend.

Her list was a third the size and it bought things, because the price of entry had not been curiosity, it had been an actual job in hand.

And there was the quieter effect that mattered most. Everyone who used that sheet had a small, immediate success with her help before spending a penny, which is the same eight bars a girl plays in a parlour on the first evening. Nobody ever felt that from page thirty-one of anything.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Nobody wants your knowledge. They want their afternoon back. That is the whole difference between the two gifts. One offers to teach a person about their problem, which requires them to find three hours they do not have. The other removes a piece of the problem while they stand there, which requires nothing at all and leaves them holding something that worked.

So judge the free thing by two tests, and not by how impressive it is. Can it be used today, in ten minutes, by a tired person? And does wanting it prove something about the person who asked? The second test is the one that quietly builds your list's quality: a broad free book proves only idle interest, while a sheet that calculates a specific job proves a specific job. The gift is a sieve, exactly as the price and the rule and the questions have been in every letter of this series, and a sieve with holes the size of a barn catches the whole world.

Two further warnings, both cheap to heed. Make the gift a slice of the work rather than a substitute for it: the thing that shows the problem is real and handleable, not the thing that lets a person handle all of it alone, or you will be the consultant on the quick call giving away the answer and wondering why nobody books. And do not measure it by downloads. Nine hundred names that never open anything are not an asset, they are a monthly bill and a false comfort.

Three questions, and think of the last three people who bought from you:

1. What did each of them ask just before buying? Not at the start, at the end: the practical, slightly anxious question about quantity, timing, cost or risk. There will be a pattern. That question, answered properly, is your gift, and it is usually one page long.
2. Can it be used before bedtime? A checklist, a calculator, a template with your numbers already in it, a sample they can hold. If it needs an evening set aside, rebuild it smaller. Usefulness delayed is usefulness declined, every time, by everyone.
3. Does wanting it prove they are a buyer? Imagine the sort of person who would ask for it. If that description includes students, rivals and the merely curious, you have built a magazine. Narrow it until the only people who want it are people with the job in hand this month.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why does the small list buy?

Because of what each gift asked of the person taking it. The book asked for curiosity, and curiosity is free, so nine hundred people spent it. The sheet asked for a job in hand, and a job in hand is not free at all: it is a problem, with a date on it, belonging to somebody who has already decided something must be done. The first man collected an audience. The second collected a queue.

The verse:

Forty pages, freely sent,
Are forty pages never spent.
The little sheet they use today
Is why the second trader's paid.

Until next time. Go and write down the question your last three buyers asked at the end, and build the one-page answer to it this week.

P.S. If you have already written the forty pages, do not burn them. Cut the one useful sheet out of the middle and give that away, and let the rest earn its keep as articles, or as the thing you send after somebody has bought. Good work in the wrong container is not wasted. It is merely in the wrong container.

Also in the archive: The Words She Typed, Let Them Try It and The Cart in the Frost.