We live in a world of free. If you’re trying to make money, especially online, you might think that would make things difficult.

Every day, someone releases a new eBook, video, or podcast that not only contains tremendous value, but gives away many of the "tricks of the trade" that we used to have to pay for.

You'd think that the paid content business would be shrinking in the face of all this free information, but it keeps getting stronger. How can that be?

For instance, there are a lot of free materials that teach people how to set up a Wordpress blog or to use Twitter effectively. A quick search on YouTube will provide you with hundreds of videos that can teach you to do almost anything you want to know.

Yet, there are still people making plenty of cash selling products explaining how to do any and all of those things.

How do they do it?

Building relationships

People buy from those that they know and trust.

Sure, there are people in the yellow highlighter brigade who can sell ice to an Eskimo, but it isn’t easy to do. (And you may not even want to.)

Most of us can't write the ultimate sales letter. We also can't afford to hire a $20,000 copywriter. So how do we do it? We build relationships.

When you establish a “winning difference” or USP, you can start attracting the people who really dig what you do.

If your stuff is good, I guarantee you can find at least one evangelist to recruit others to come check you out. They'll spread the word for you, which attracts more evangelists, and means that you will have ever more people stopping by.

Nurture relationships with your readers and evangelists and your small army will continue to grow.

The benefit of free

Content marketing is all about giving away some of your best stuff for free. Not just your “pretty good” content, but content that will improve and add value to the lives of your readers.

As they learn more, their game will improve and they’ll keep coming around for more. And they’ll want to reciprocate by either buying your paid products or spreading your message.

Most people won't buy from you unless you've proven to them that you know what you’re talking about. Great content is one of the best ways you can do that. When you give content away for free, you earn trust and anchor your business in the mind of that reader. If they use your stuff, and it works, they'll keep coming back for more.

They’ll pay for souvenirs

I first heard this idea from Seth Godin when he gave a speech about book marketing, but the concept applies to nearly every online business.

He said that people buy souvenirs, not products. In the music industry, Nine Inch Nails does this by selling collector's editions of their albums. In the blogging industry, we can do it by selling a physical version of a product, limiting quantities of digital products, or by publishing a book.

If your blog creates a great experience, think about what kind of souvenirs you could offer that would let them hold onto that experience.

They’ll pay for access

Particularly if you’ve used your blog to build your reputation and authority, you can also sell different levels of access to you.

The people who truly love what you do want other ways to access your knowledge. Your raving fans will start by picking up every digital product you offer. From there, many will want more exclusive access, such as a consulting service, a mentoring or coaching program, or a monthly membership with exclusive access to you.

If you empower people to do what they most want to do, they'll want to buy something in order to feel closer to you. (And, of course, it goes without saying that you’ll deliver value that’s in line with the prices you’re charging.)

JB Glossinger does a great job of this with his Coach Cast. Brian and Sonia do it with Teaching Sells.

You'd have to sell thousands of eBooks to make a living as a blogger, but it might take only a few hundred premium members to do the same job.

Free samples have been part of marketing and selling since long before the Internet. Give great value and follow a few proven models, and you’ll discover not only does “free” not hurt you, it can actually be a great boost for your online business.

About the Author: Nathan Hangen writes about web entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com, and about how to use social media to fuel your brand at Making It Social. Follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

While social media often commands favorable media attention, the less often told story is that successful initiatives are rare to come by and that there are still a number of organizational roadblocks that managers need to overcome in order to make progress.

Still, we are seeing signs of progress in the form of new efficiencies, more direct ways to connect with customers, and ways to make products and services better. From my experience working and talking with people in large, complex organizations, here are a small sample of obstacles to look for with suggestions on how you might overcome them:

1. Culture shock

Externally, social media is a vastly significant iteration of the Web which has empowered the public in ways we never imagined. It's also highly disruptive. The same potential for disruption exists internally for organizations. Instead of everyday consumers becoming empowered, everyday employees now have this potential as well. And this could cause a culture shock to the system of an organization structured upon decades of tradition, hierarchy, middle management and incentives. An inconvenient truth remains that change is often perceived as a threat.

How to overcome it

Find the change agents within your organization who are passionate about making your company better and harness their passion for the benefit of your business. Comcast's Frank Eliason was a customer service manager who began engaging (and, more importantly, helping) customers via his personal Twitter account. When the rest of the company was made aware of the initiative (and the ensuing positive attention), they decided to reward the effort as opposed to doing a u-turn. A great way to overcome culture shock within a large organization is for leadership to recognize and embrace the mavericks driven to change things for the better. The next challenge then becomes scale.

2. The legal treadmill

The changes sparked by technology are giving the lawyers a headache. Legal teams must be on full alert to changes in the social media landscape, such as the FTC's recent decision to force bloggers to disclose when they've been given payment or products. The legal department of any organization exists to protect it. But sometimes doing business at the speed of real time makes it feel like you are on a treadmill when you need to be sprinting to the finish line.

How to overcome it

Legal needs to be engaged early on and by the right people. There also needs to be support from the top if it means doing something that pushes the boundaries. Michael Dell fully supported Dell's pioneering social media efforts from the top down which no doubt influenced decisions made in the legal department. That said, not everything has to involve the CEO. When I recently approached The Art of Shaving (a P&G brand) to sponsor our Movember team, I advised them that the first thing they should do is talk to their legal department. The brand manager did just that and legal produced clear guidelines about how the social sponsorship would work. In order to get off the legal treadmill, you need a combination of leadership and collaboration.

3. Riskphobia

Making strides toward thriving as a more socially calibrated business means taking a risk or three. And in this economy, no one wants to do that. Unless your organization has a serious entrepreneurial streak running through it, it's likely that the people who work in it are generally risk averse and rewarded for playing by the rules. However, riskphobia is a serious problem for large companies who are finding their businesses disrupted by smaller, more nimble players. Tower Records probably wishes they took some more calculated risks before the industry came crashing down around them.

How to overcome it

Risk can often be managed by piloting small initiatives to see what happens — while learning, gathering data, and iterating on them while they inform bigger and better initiatives. When our company launched our website, we included a real-time stream of our activities and content on our homepage. The stream even includes information about who we email (you don't see names, but you do see the domains). Some view this as risky business, but we felt that the gesture would help us help others manage the risks of transparency and we can manage what gets shared. It's a small gesture, but meaningful as we hope to help others manages their own risks.

These are just three of many obstacles. So, I'm curious — what obstacles have you encountered? How have you dealt with them?

David Armano is part of the founding team at Dachis Group, an Austin-based consultancy delivering social business design services. He is both an active practitioner and thinker in the worlds of digital marketing, experience design, and the social web. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/armano