Friday afternoon I  got home from the gym, walked into the kitchen, saw the little lady and asked her the usual “Anything good in the mail today?”. Usually I’m asking about money in the form of affiliate checks or payments from a certain client that I had just won a small claims case from. “No but you have a box from EzineArticles, or something like that”. EzineArticles? I wonder why they would send me anything? Surely not a bill!

I went into the dining room and sure enough there was a plain white box, with the EzineArticles Logo on the top. A nice looking plain white box too! Maybe I could use it for shipping something. I opened it up to find a really nice coffee mug, a coaster and a small bag of coffee, with a note of thanks and appreciation for being an expert author at EzineArticles.

Wow, I was floored. I honestly wasn’t expecting this, nor did I know they sent these things out to people who achieve the rank of “Expert Author” in their article directory. Really nice mug, heavy, big and with the I Heart EzineArticles on it. I drink coffee and I am also getting ready to stop drinking coffee, again, but I also have a small collection of coffee mugs I am proud of. Small achievement awards for myself for various things. This being the latest and most unexpected.

EzineArticles is the article directory of choice for me when it comes to article submissions to help with backlinks, and SERPs ranking with my little niche websites I build. I’ve submitted a quite a few articles to them, just to help my sites get better ranking in Google, and to help drive traffic to the little sites. Aside from Google, they are the second biggest traffic source for my little niche websites.

As I write this article I can’t help but smile that they sent me a really cool coffee mug, coaster and bag of coffee. Who does that for an Internet Marketer these days? A guy who sits in front of his computer working on ways of making money but writing. No one that I can think of.

Which brings me to the topic of this post, gaining loyalty and trust through appreciation of your viewers. I don’t have anything to give away yet, but I am currently working on my first give away. I’m also working on my first eBook, but I can give away my knowledge of making income from small well crafted niche sites.

Soon, by the end of this month my free product will be done, my eBook will hopefully be done as well. I will keep posting content explaining how I make money from small niche websites and I will continue to do my new podcast of people who are making it in online business. Which I also meant to mention, I don’t have a podcast for us this week, as I couldn’t get someone fast enough to fill the slot, but I will have someone for next week. Just working out the details as we speak.

So giving away something really good to your readers may sometimes feel like your giving away money. Dave Navarro of The Launch Coach recently mentions this in a podcast interview done by Corbett Barr* of Think Traffic. He says if it feels like you’re giving away money, or if you’re saying to yourself you could sell this product, then you’re on the right track. If the product you just made, could make you a nice tidy sum of money, why not give it away and build some trust and loyalty amongst your readers?

Doing this builds trust and loyalty with you, because your readers know that you are cranking out the good stuff, and they can trust you to put out good stuff when you say you’re going to. If you put out good stuff for free, and then you announce you’re releasing a product in which you intend to sell, then if your free such is good, your products that are for sale must be good as well, if not, better.

People will come to expect good content and product from you, if they see what you give away if good and useful. Navarro also mentions if you feel you couldn’t sell the product for anything, you should go back to the drawing board and fix it. Dave Navarro also has an eBook called How To Launch The **** Out Of Your eBook. An eBook I have yet to read but I hear it is really good. I will be buying it soon enough and doing a review on it.

Give away good content, give away good free stuff and gain loyalty and trust with your readers.

*Be sure to listen to the podcast, it’s very informative.

Mentionables:

• Dave Navarro of The Launch Coach
• Corbett Barr of Think Traffic
• How To Launch The **** Out Of Your eBook

My Mug: