How English Speaking Course Provider Uses Freed Content to Increase Sales

Online, September 17, 2010 (Newswire.com) - The debate over free versus paid content continues. Free content is popular for obvious reasons, but is it losing its appeal? Quite often free content has a reputation for being sub-standard. For free content to continue to be just that, the volume has to be huge in order to fund the project long term.
Paid content has more status but comes at a premium and advertising has to be paid for somehow. It also normally puts profit into the bank accounts of shareholders and may not necessarily be a great product.
What can you do if you have an excellent digital product that needs selling but you don't have the advertising budget to make sure you get the publicity it deserves?
A lot of companies use affiliate marketing to successfully sell their products by paying anyone who sells the product a commission for every sale they make. Affiliates can take many shapes and forms. They are usually a website owner who promotes your product in order to make money. Quite often the passion behind the sales pitch is missing from affiliate marketing.
Last year Jason West from English Out There, a company who helps people learn to speak English online, was asked to speak at the ETCon2 online educational conference by award winning edu-blogger Kirsten Winkler. The invitation was to speak on the subject of communities and the power of crowd sourcing in conjunction with online language learning.
Jason was going to talk about the free versus paid content debate when the idea of 'freed' content struck. Because digital products can be sold very cheaply you could make it affordable to everyone all over the world.
The concept of freed content was born (All of 'free' with a little bit of 'paid'..the'd'). Content can be almost free but charge just enough to cover the expertise and time that goes into creating a great product. For example the learn to speak English eBooks from English Out There cost from just 25 US cents per hour to buy and the more you use them the cheaper they become.
The idea of freed content satisfies both the argument for free and paid content. English Out There have realised what sells a product is glowing reviews from people who have actually used the product. Word of mouth marketing still remains the most effective.
The freed content model allows for teachers and students who have used the English speaking course the opportunity to sell the product on their blogs and social media profiles in places such as Facebook and make a commission on every sale. The English Out There product has been designed so it is totally secure and flexible (i.e. uploaded into virtual classrooms to teach without any DRM issues).
The method of recommending the English speaking course to others can often pay for your initial purchase of the product. This rewards users of the product for their loyalty. Recommending a product you can vouch for is easy especially when it is freed content (almost free).
It's easy to recommend a product that is excellent value for money, with a proven track record, but this is not the only earning potential. Any teacher who purchases a complete set of EOT courses effectively becomes a franchisee and can set up their own English speaking business online instantly with six 60 hours courses that are proven to work.
Its early days but students and teachers recommending and selling the English Out There course are growing.