E-book or give it away for traffic?

[krimles]

Hi,



I currently have a website www.chezradio.com selling low power AM transmitters which I manufacture. I use Google PPC and have some ads on forums that cater to these people. These transmitters are used by community broadcasters, schools,
churches, businesses etc. It's OK, but tends to come and go in spurts. It's not enough for me leave my day job and can be a lot of work,even though I do sub-contract out some parts of the assembly process. Getting parts together, talking with potential buyers, taking orders, shipping etc. is very time consuming.

I'm looking for feedback on a 2nd website www.am-transmitter.com in the same business but want to get the maximum return without having to constantly be tending it. I was considering an e-info site that would offer a unique transmitter design that hobbyists could build. On Google there are 7.5 million searches for 'am transmitter schematic'. Trouble is that these hobbyists are very cheap. But here are the 2 scenarios I am considering:

1.
Offer the design for free and put Clickbank affiliate links for many different types of products all over the site plus Google Adsense. Use the free design to get traffic onto the site. I don't think capturing email addresses would likely be beneficial?

2.
Sell the design as a downloadable e-book for $5 to $10 or more?

Would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,
Gerry

[FrozenCanuck]

Gerry,

I would start by first offering the book as a for-payment product. Don't give it away until you see if the market is willing to pay for it.

I highly recommend you make a VIDEO presentation to explain the benefits / differentiators of your product to your market. They are easy to do, BTW. Andy Jenkins is now just launching a product called video boss (http://thevideoboss.com) which I think is some awesome content that we should all be watching. I'm sure he will have a product for sale soon.

So ...

1) Sell your product first, test a higher price point such as $20 unless the parts to build this kit are ultra cheap. If the parts are $30+ then I think a $20 ebook is doable.

2) If you can't sell it at a good price DEFINITELY require an opt-in to give away the PDF. Make a list of hobbyists, and find stuff on Commission Junction that you can pitch to the list. There has to be something ... even if you just use the list to send notices of blog posts on a blog you start (this will get traffic to your site, which you can monetize with adsense, or whatever.

[krimles]

Thanks for the advice FC.