0:00 So what is the f-word in spreadsheets when you're selling spreadsheets? And that f-word is free. It's a four-letter word and it actual- absolutely sucks.
0:13 Why does free suck and how- How can you make something that people will actually buy? Sure, I'm gonna make an entire other course about creating freebies, creating lead magnets, but I think if you are truly trying to sell spreadsheets, and you consider giving them away for free, I think the one reason
0:38 you may want to give them away for free is you want to validate them. You want to get people using the sheet, and then you want to see if people actually use the sheet.
0:47 And I think free is just the number one worst way to do this. Now, of course, I'm going to talk about in the next video where free really really works and why free works in selling spreadsheets, but that's going to be creating a smaller version, a taste kind of free taste because free does work, reciprocity
1:06 definitely rules, but again, I'm going to make that in the next video and you're going to see that, and we're going to talk about why reciprocity is very good in getting people in the door, but if you're trying to validate a business, if you're trying to validate your spreadsheets to sell, then and you're
1:21 wondering, will this sell? Do not make it for free. In fact, I would say raise the price, and again, I'm going to talk about price and strategies in the next, next video, um, where you may be thinking, oh, I'm going to put it down for like five, ten bucks, because I see this on Etsy, if you're using 
1:35 Etsy as a- Example, I would not, uh, sell my sheets for five to ten dollars, make them twenty dollars, and make them worth it, right?
1:44 Add a few little automations, add a few app scripts, or some templating, or some integrations, uh, very easy to set up, um, if you take- All my other courses, uh, and coming back to why free sucks is because you will never actually validate the selling part of spreadsheets.
2:03 Again, there are a lot of reasons why you may want to give away sheets, uh, for one reason Maybe that uh the people who are getting in the sheet and using the sheet cannot pay if you create some kind of like job application tracker or job listing like a resource of job boards.
2:24 People with- without jobs do not pay. Uh maybe may I would recommend maybe making it for a high level person who is switching jobs if you make a free version with all the job boards but then you make a paid version for people who have jobs and are looking for a higher paid job like in the VP uh VP or
2:40 C.O. or C.O. or level suite that kind of thing is very useful and people are willing to pay for that but people without jobs are not willing to pay and shouldn't pay right?
2:50 And so there are definitely other options to um create a free sheet maybe you create a listing and you create a- affiliate links totally usable like I think um panda buy is one of those places that a lot of people will create sheets and then have affiliate links within it.
3:09 Amazon influencers you can create a sheet of inf- uh products to buy and then have Amazon links their affiliate links totally okay.
3:16 Um, but if you are trying to sell a spreadsheet do not give it away for free. Uh, and of course sure give it away for free to existing customers or like I do I have a lifetime deal at better sheets and everything that I made.
3:30 I give away for free to those users. But those are already paying users. If you want to test the market, if you're looking to validate your sheet and understand will people buy this.
3:39 Uh, you'll definitely want to make it for some price. Put any price. Uh, if you do not want have any, um, idea of what price.
3:48 I'll talk about that in another video. But maybe around 20 to 30 dollars is a perfect price to start at.
3:53 You can always go down. You can always do promotions. Which again, I'll talk about marketing. Uh, how to do promotions and how to give away stuff for cheap and make people want to buy.
4:02 But let's talk about why people want to buy the spreadsheet now. Like, why would people want to buy it? Is give them a reason.
4:08 Talk about the, talk about the problem and the solution that you're solving with the sheet. Talk about uh agitating that problem.
4:15 What is the costly uh. Uh solution? Is it some other software that exists? Is it manual processes, costly in time or costly in money?
4:23 Uh and where, how can they make a sheet like this? What did you do to build the sheet? All of this makes people want to buy your sheet because they're like in that bill and build or buy situation.
4:36 They're making that decision as they're reading your sales page. And when you're selling a sheet, you want to agitate these things.
4:45 You want to talk about them, mention them, and agitate them. Talk about a costly solution and an even costier solution.
4:53 A consulting fee, for instance. Uh, subscription service may exist for this for like 10, 20 bucks a month. Or you can even hire a consultant to do it for 250 bucks an hour.
5:04 Umm, talk about how much time you time it may take to do X, Y, or Z. But then it, 10 X at time for troubleshooting and issues.
5:13 Uh, you may have uh structuring data, for instance, is very useful and takes a lot of time. If you've developed a way to structure the data in a school sheet already Ready?
5:22 And you're selling in this template, template sheet tool, great. Do that and mention it. And that's how you get people to buy is you agitate that problem, you give them the solution, which actually may be worse uh solution.
5:36 And then you say, and by the way, I have this Google sheet that actually solve this in twenty bucks, or thirty dollars, or fifty dollars, or ninety nine dollars.
5:43 You might be thinking ninety nine dollars is a lot of money, but for someone who is using this Google sheet each and every day, for hours a day, for instance, ice created uh better letters, which is a newsletter creator.
5:54 creator curator curation tool. people have the problem of keeping track of all of the articles they're uh reading through a week.
6:04 they want to put them in their own newsletter. where do you capture that data? a lot of people are using apple notes for free and it's just horrendous for or not.
6:11 organizing and getting all of the auditions. uh and there's a web clipper. someone's using notion or a web clipper or uh there was what is that?
6:19 uh oh yeah I forgot the name of it but there was uh sort of a web clipper that exists and it's great.
6:24 easy to capture the data but then getting it into a- uh hml format. I did all of that. I structured the hml formatting in the goo sheet and so like you export your list of articles from the google sheet into uh convert kit or mailchimp and just copy and paste.
6:39 very easy super not time consuming and you can read articles during the week it's a chrome bookmarklet you get makes it super easy to curate so like all of that stuff people are using this literally each and every day to curate their newsletter once a week and uh they're willing to pay ninety nine dollars
6:55 for this kind of tool because it's a one time payment as well instead of you know. twenty five thirty bucks a month for some other tool uh or even try and do this themselves because there was a lot of coding involved um but yeah free socks that's the f-word in uh selling google sheets but again in the
7:14 next video I'm going to talk about literally why uh free might work for you and what you might do to create sort of a mini version of your sheet and then I will also talk about some pricing strategies in the video after that I will see