Most marketers look at information products as something that must be sold. Savvy marketers who look at the bigger picture know that sometimes it makes more sense to give away information products as free gifts - to build a relationship of trust with prospects that leads to future sales.

How can free information products translate into future sales?

When a new visitor comes across your site, they know nothing about you, and are usually wary of being sold to. If the very first action you ask visitors to take is to place trust in you and fork over cash so you can sell them an information product, most will run for the door as quickly as possible!

Now if you offer them something of value, which shows off your expertise, then you start to build a relationship of trust between you and the prospect.

You offer a free information product in exchange for the visitor's email address, name and maybe mailing address. Most people today are reluctant to give out their contact information, due to spammers and junk mail. So the information product you promise to give them must be valuable enough, and offer enough benefits that they consider it worth giving up their contact information.

You are essentially using free information, to bargain away their contact information.

Once you have their contact information, you now begin the process of soft selling the new prospect who just took a chance and gave you a way to continue keeping in touch. Remember, you will want to gain their trust before you offer them any kind of sales pitch.

Be sure to let the prospect know that they must use a valid address to get the free information, as it will only be sent through email. This will keep people from submitting fake emails, just to get your information.

You will want to setup an autoresponder sequence that follows a similar theme:

After two or three days, you will email the prospect and ask if they managed to download your free information product without any problem, and if they have read it already.

Another day or two later, you might follow up with a quick note pointing out something valuable or interesting in the information product, and ask if they already noticed it. This way, you are reinforcing the value you provide in your product, while encouraging the prospect to become a 'consumer' of your information.

You can do this a few more times, each contact establishing a trusting relationship, one that underlines the fact that you care more about them getting something from you rather than you wanting them to buy your ebook or other product.

Once you have established a level of trust between yourself and the prospect - or at least eliminated the fear of being pushed into a sale - you can introduce the product you are selling. Make sure to relate it to the free information product you gave, and explain how it enhances the value they are already getting from the freebie.

If you make a convincing case for the extra value to be gained from buying your information product, and they are already getting an advantage from your free one, the resistance to selling is nearly eliminated - and you will be flooded with sales.

Remember, this will not happen instantly. It is a process with stages and you cannot rush people through it. The good news is that when it works, you will gain a loyal, trusting, happy customer who will gladly do business with you for many years to come.