Review: FreeIQ – an online marketplace and community where you can upload and download free and paid content.

This is a great new resource for freelancers, for a number of different reasons.

You can access a ton of free and paid content on the site, much of it about online marketing.

And you can also upload your own free and for-a-fee content, and make a few bucks too.

1. Read some great free content

Although FreeIQ is still in beta, there is already plenty of free content available on the site. Watch instructional videos, listen to audio, download documents.

You have to do a bit of sifting, because a lot of people have added purely promotional “sound and video bites” to promote themselves and their products.

But the site has a voting system for its content, a bit like YouTube, so in time the quality content will rise to the top of the search listings.

While you’re searching, you can download my own free offering – Writing for the Web #1.

2. Buy some quality content

On the right side, a bit like Google ads on any content site, you also see products for sale. Each has a product page with some information and a teaser audio or video introduction.

Again, look around and you might find something worth investing in.

In this for-a-fee area I added one of my own short and inexpensive e-books, “Are you ready to quit your day job and work from home?”

3. Create an account and upload your own content

This is where it can get exciting for freelancers. This is a great way to get yourself known, and maybe make a little money too.

However, I have some advice for you. Create free content of real value. Users of FreeIQ will quickly come to recognize the low-value, promotional free content, and will ignore it.

If you create something really valuable and useful for your audience, and make it free, then this is a great way to get known...and become respected.

Of the two e-books I have uploaded, the most valuable is the one I offer for free. And that’s deliberate. If a thousand people download the free item... that’s a thousand more people who know about me. And yes, I have plenty of links in the e-book that direct people through to my sites.

Build a reputation with your free content...and you’ll then find yourself much better placed to sell your for-a-fee content.

4. Build your own author page, and sign up as an affiliate.

As with MySpace, you can create your own author page on FreeIQ (here's mine), with your photo, bio and a list of the content you offer.

You can also sign up as an affiliate. The affiliate program is excellent and can benefit you both as an author of content (when others recommend your content), and also when you simply recommend FreeIQ to others.

Concluding thoughts...

FreeIQ is still in beta, and I’m watching it carefully to see whether ultimately it becomes a source of great content...or a vast repository of self-promotional, hyped-up video clips.

I am guessing there will always be something of a blend of good and bad content on the site. But they do have a voting system which will, I hope, ensure that the quality content always rises to the top of the search listings.

In any event, as a freelancer, you should take advantage of this now, while the site is still relatively new, and use it to showcase your talents, content and business.

Find out more about FreeIQ here...