Creative Commons License photo credit: woodleywonderworks		 I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve always wanted to make money by giving something away for free. Of course, this begs the question of can it be done? Back in 1999, another attorney and I wrote the book, “Ohio Renters’ Rights: How to take on your landlord.” It started out as a physical product that we used to spend long hours “making” ourselves. We used to make copies, make covers and bind it all by ourselves. Then the printed version morphed into e-book form, and we phased out the physical version for quite some time until I found lulu.com. Now we offer printed versions exclusively through lulu.com.

Sales of the book that spawned dozens of other legal ebooks have waned, and I figured that now was as good a time as any to offer the entire book online for free. To that end, I started ohiorentersrights.com and have been adding bits and pieces of the book as I am able. It’s going to take a few more weeks to complete the project. I don’t mind posting an unfinished website as I subscribe to the Microsoft theory of product development/sales - It doesn’t matter if it’s finished or not just put it up for sale and update it later. Of course, my product is “free” so if you can’t read the whole thing now - too bad.

So how am I going to make money off of the free ebook? I guess I’m making a few bets by doing this.

1 - I’m betting that people will like what they read and decide that they would rather buy their own copy than read through 100’s of pages on the web. I will offer the reader the ability to buy the ebook as well.

2 - I’m betting that I will cut through a lot of the credibility concerns that buyers often have about buying e-books and the like over the internet. Afterall, I have nothing to hide - the entire book is online.

3 - I’m betting that I can make money off of related affiliate programs from the viewers on the website.

4 - I’m betting that my 160 pages of content will generate some nice traffic over time.

And, of course, I’m always open to other suggestions. Stay tuned as I will be reporting on the Incredible, Free E-Book, Money Making Experiment’s progress from time to time.

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