If you’ve been online for a little while, you’ve probably been offered your share of free reports. You know, the freebies that have a value of $47 to $97 that someone is going to give you. All you need to do is give your name and email address, and it’s yours.

As an added bonus, you may get the right to give the report away to your subscribers, or anyone visiting your web site.

In my experience, most of these free reports are pretty much a waste of time. Instead of offering some useful information, they are just a sales letter, and poor ones at that. Worth $47 to $97? I don’t think so. But this isn’t always the case.

Some of the free reports are good that. I can’t believe that they’re available for free. These are the reports that probably could be sold for $47 to $97. They’re packed with useful information.

I’m not against free reports. Far from it. They are a great free and viral way to promote your business. But the point here is to make sure that your free report offers value. See, if you offer a free report, you may get quite a few downloads. But if it stinks, how many people will download your next free report?

If you are going to use free reports to give away, or sell (remember the $7 reports craze?), make it something that is going to be useful. Make it so good that people who read it are willing to give it away to their subscribers and friends.

I’m not suggesting that you forget the real reason for giving away a free report. You want to build credibility, grow your subscriber list, and/or promote a product. There’s nothing wrong with that. Besides that, you’re in business. Everything you do should help you grow your business.

Put enough value into the free report so that you build credibility. Make it so good that people want to subscribe to your list to get more of your information. Make it interesting enough that they will click on a link to buy something.

It’s not real hard to stand out from the glut of free reports online. Give some really good information, and your report will get wide exposure, and your traffic and sales will benefit.

Jimmy D. Brown has an excellent product called Small Reports Fortune. In this product, he explains in easy to understand steps how to create 12-15 page small reports. Reports that you can give away, or sell for a few dollars. If you want to learn how to create profit producing reports, take a look at Small Reports Fortune.