Unpopular Opinion: "Give Value for Free" is Bullshit More Often Than Not

[AgainstAllOdds]

I just want to clarify:

I'm not saying giving away samples is bad, but that the general wisdom that this is the only way to build a business is significantly flawed.

It's a marketing strategy, and for most industries and businesses, a suboptimal one.

Obviously for tech and information based businesses it works really well, but in other businesses (especially service based businesses), it's not necessarily the best road to take.

 

[jpmartin]

Because the fundamental product had incredible value.

MJ, I've been debating this topic for a long time, and having read your book I understand where you're coming from. There is an interesting book by Chris Anderson - Free: The Future of a Radical Price

But WHAT you're giving away for free should be kept in mind. If it's something digital, giving it away for free or even a sample of it is at best tiny incremental in cost. Giving a cookie away or a physical sample, is money from your pocket.

Even in the software space, while freemium is good... many are evaluating this freemium cost now. And that's what I'm studying now. For example, some say that customer support for a product is costly, and at the end of the day - very few convert. So they felt that its best to give a 14 day trial and see if they can onboard them. Others just say, pay for 1 month and try us out... if you don't like it, don't continue.

There's another side to this story that's worth reading. Newton Mail (formerly CloudMagic) - the guys created a great product... had around 4 milllion free users, and then decided to charge $49 per year. Guess how many converted to paid (myself including) 40,000. I honestly felt $49 per year was worth it, but many didn't. Their story, they closed shop this year (pls read this).

And because I use other email apps, the next best one was Spark & Superhuman. Spark is 100% free... Superhuman is not (they will charge around $39 per month for VIP, but gotta admit it is dammmmn fast!). So how do you compete with that? Readdle (owners of Spark, sell other products and make money from that)... but how much can you sustain the development of a free product? Was Newton good, yes... it was great imho! Probably on par with Superhuman (except for speed).

Interested to hear your thoughts on this... because today everybody expects everything for free on the internet!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MJ DeMarco]

In regards to Newton... was it a product problem or a pricing problem

Yes, could be a pricing problem ... a Corvette is a nice car and a good product, but not priced at $250,000. The pricing is the problem, not the product.

4 million subscribers says there is some value there. Really hard to believe they could only grab 40,000.

I would have not shut that down, it's still $2M a year, unless they were blowing through big support costs.

And the larger question, why not sell it? Surely it had to be worth something!

 

[Real Deal Denver]

There's another piece to the puzzle here as well...

It's possible that because this offering was free to being with, the company essentially "anchored" their customers to the free price point. In other words, customers perceived the value of the product as $0 simply because the company had told them previously that they were pricing it as $0.

In negotiation, it's often said that to break an anchor (generally, a price anchor), you want to reframe the product or concession being discussed. For example, I once took a few articles that I had originally posted on my website and turned them into an eBook, which I sold for about $5 in the Kindle.

I sold many thousands of them. But, had I instead put a "Pay to Unlock This Content" button on my website to for people to get access to that articles, it's likely I wouldn't have gotten any sales. Content on my site has always been 100% free, so people will feel ripped off if I start charging for it. But, by reframing the context (taking the info off the website and selling it on another site), I was able to break the anchor and change the perceived value.

Going back to the software being discussed above... I don't know if they tried this or not, but my guess is that if they had packaged the software differently, added a couple new features, changed the name or whatever -- in other words, reframed the offering -- they might have been able to do a better job of breaking that $0 anchor their customers had to the product, and gotten more conversions.

You're totally wrong @JScott. I know the info you put out. I have both of your books. I bought them because they give me at LEAST 1,000 times more value than I paid for them.

But I don't have to tell you that, of course. You market the way I do. Let the freebie seekers spend their time scouring the internet for free info. They know what their time is worth.

You put out awesome material, and you attract "serious" customers. I don't remember what I paid for your books. Maybe $20 each? Wow. If someone won't swing $40 for the benefit of years of a man's knowledge, maybe they're cut out for a career at McDonalds anyway...

In your case @JScott, don't waste your time courting the deal seekers. Your subject matter is the very antithesis of cheap/free anyway. Now for all that great advertising, I'll be looking for a one dollar coupon off your upcoming book! You got my address...

 

[Johnny boy]

My lawn care company:

In the winter I offered free lawn care for people.

Most of them signed up for our premium plan in the spring.

Average profit per contract: $1000 a year + lifetime value if they stay with us.


My web design and marketing company:

Talked to people over the phone in long conversations and gave away all of my best advice for them to grow their business. I’d tell them most of what they were asking me to do wouldn’t actually help and would just be a waste of money to pay anyone for.

They’d send me $1000 for a two hour conversation.


What is content marketing?

How do people become celebrities in the first place?

Why is Gary vaynerchuck bigger than all of the social media “gurus” out there?

Giving for free works. Ask Facebook.

 

[PureDirect]

I've wondered about this as well in the past.

I help people with a variety of knee issues get better and many of those that unsubscribe from my email list give "Knee is better thanks to you" or something similar as reason for unsubscribing. It makes me happy, but it doesn't pay the bills.

So the question is: where do you draw the line between what you give away for free (because you genuinely want to help people regardless of whether they buy or not, which is where I currently stand and how I've been taught) and what you charge for if there is a finite quantity of advice you can give, regardless of how nice "abundance mentality" sounds on paper.

 

[Dami-B]

Brilliant!

There's a used car lot in my area that gives away a free $5000-ish car every 2 weeks. His facebook posts get 4,000 or so likes every time, and 100+ shares.

I know him, and he sells more cars than he can keep up with. Has put at least half of the other used car lots out of business. He's very niched (sub $6,000 cars and cash only), and plays big on the "free bucket of chicken" mentality.

To enter the contest all you have to do is fill out a form with your name, telephone, and the criteria of what kind of car you are looking for, plus friend him on Facebook. Then magically, when you don't win, he finds a car that fits your criteria and calls you...

No one hardly enters a contest for something they don't want. So even if they didn't win a simple follow up on the leads that participated will lead to sales... Brilliant tactic

 

[Jeff Noel]

So let's say you're doing courses - would you give away the first module and make them pay for the rest of the course? OR make one course entirely free then make a paid one and hope they buy that one?

I'd rather give an overview of the course for free (even if it's just a part of a module) than giving the majority of it for free. Most people that are on the brink of purchasing your course are unsure of the way you talk, the way you explain things or just the quality of the content. Showing a short part can often convert these people into sales.

Edit: @AgainstAllOdds Just read your last post and I definitely agree with your point of view. Still, it created a great discussion here ! It's quite interesting to see the different ways this strategy can work, or not, depending on the market/industry.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ChrisV]

Okay.. I see where you’re coming from but consider the following:

There are a lot of Authors i’ve bought books from because they put up free articles.

A lot of colleges i’ve taken courses from because they posted free videos

And I just read how tech information samples are different but...

I recently started buying Mocha Frapp from McDonalds ALL the time. I buy them like every day. Why? Because I got coupon for a free one. I tried it and they cost to buy it $2 and they’re just as good as the $7 one I get at Starbucks!

Ha, such a simplistic statement is so true.

If you need no better real world example of a powerful value proposition and a productocracy, the freemium business model is what drug dealers use.

The product is so powerful, they know the more free trials they give away, the more customers they get.

Bingo. People gotta know what you got is good.

Also... It seems reasonable that people would just take the goodies and run, but in Social Psychology we know of a concept called Reciprocity. From a sale perspective researcher Robert Caildini writes extensively about this in his book “Influence.”

Reciprocity can be summed up as follows: when someone does you a favor, you unconsciously feel compelled to return that favor. "We are obligated to give back to others, the form of behavior that they have first given to us."

Caildini referenced the Krishna people at the airports. They give people this free flower then people feel compelled to do them a favor.

I know when someone does a favor for me I feel unconsciously indebted to them and I often can’t wait to return the favor to them. Try and notice this feeling in yourself. Notice how it feels like the scales are being tipped in their favor.

Exhibit A: those little pre-printed address labels that come to us in the mail this time of year along with letters asking for donations.

Those labels seem innocent enough, but they often trigger a small but very real dilemma. "I can't send it back to them because it's got my name on it," Cialdini says. "But as soon as I've decided to keep that packet of labels, I'm in the jaws of the rule."

The packet of labels costs roughly 9 cents, Cialdini says, but it dramatically increases the number of people who give to the charities that send them. "The hit rate goes from 18 to 35 percent," he says. In other words, the number of people who donate almost doubles.


"We are obligated to give back to others, the form of behavior that they have first given to us," he says. "Essentially thou shall not take without giving in return."

And so if someone passes you in the hall and says hello, you feel compelled to return their greeting. When you don't, you notice it, it makes you uncomfortable, out of balance. That's the rule of reciprocation.

"There's not a single human culture that fails to train its members in this rule," Cialdini says.

This is probably because there are some obvious benefits to the rule of reciprocation; it's one of those rules that likely made it easier for us to survive as a species.

But what's interesting about all this is how psychologists like Cialdini can actually measure the way the rule affects how we behave in all sorts of situations.

NRP - Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[sparechange]

In my e-commerce brand I've done give aways reaching thousands of people yet have gained 0 sales from that (in fact lost money and time)

Considered it as a strategy to grow online traffic which failed massively hurray!

It is a good lead generator though to send out offers

 

[Boo]

Thank you for the kind words!!!

But, you sort of validated my point here! Much of the information in my books is available for free on my website, but if I just started charging people $20 to view my website, they wouldn't pay it -- they've been anchored to paying $0 for information on websites. But, because I reframed the offering (I put the information in books and sold them on Amazon), I've convinced 100,000+ people that the information is worth $25!

Crazy thing is, other people take the exact same information, put up a stage, grab a microphone and convince people the information is worth $20,000.

I don't think this can be overlooked. It's the same reason that my girl likes to shop online, for the experience. She looks through the clothes, makes the sale online and in her mind, the excitement bubbles up, she receives the package, opens it up and fights through the luxury black wrapping and custom postcard they sent her, only to get to the handbag she bought.

She could have got the same bag instantly in the store, but the experience has value. It's not just the product that you receive. It's the same reason I like to go to a certain bar to order a generic beer, because the product isn't just the beer, it's the entire experience.

There's something seemingly more valuable about a book than an online pdf. It feels secretive, exclusive and a seminar is only more so.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Nigel B]

It's possible that because this offering was free to being with, the company essentially "anchored" their customers to the free price point

And this is how so many internet startups kill themselves.

They start a free thing, scale their customer base, need to pay for resources which the investors no longer want to be funding and make a clumsy attempt to monetize.

Compounded by the issue that a second (third, fourth) startup - usually funded by a different crowd - are now offering virtually the same thing for free ... rinse, repeat.

I guess the 1-in-10 still works out, or the VC model would have collapsed - but it seems this failure model is really prevalent in narrow scope services on the internet.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

I think when it comes to informational products, giving away value is huge. Most of the courses, educational books, ebooks etc that I've purchased have been because I was already familiar with the creator/author and had already been exposed to many of their best ideas and concepts for free.

Even if you give away your absolute best information for free, people will still buy your course or your book because you've proven you can provide more value than others in the same niche, and for all they know the rest of your course/book/whatever will be even more valuable.

This website is a great example of giving away free value. You can guarantee that millionaire fastlane and unscripted have been purchased by thousands of people who otherwise wouldn't have purchased them without first coming to this site for all the free value it provides.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

@Andy Black - I'd love to hear what you think. Maybe my thought process is wrong.

 

[Bhanu]

There is good book which gives insight on this topic. Give and Take by Adam Grant . As per the book we should give 100 hrs worth of effort yearly for free . (100 hr rule of volunteering/giving). This is the optimal level of giving for long lasting success and peace of mind . I personally agree with this rule and trying to inculcate it into my fastlane efforts.

 

[ZF Lee]

A couple of cookies won’t hurt the business.

I think this concept is big in the guru world where people are just starting out.

But a business can’t sustain itself on free.

Here's what I spotted on homework/course material sharing websites.

I am using Studocu to find exercises and quizzes from past university courses.

You can upload your study materials, notes and quizzes on the site to get a few days' worth of access to its range of papers.

But for the monetization, there's a range of PREMIUM documents which you have to pay for it. You can't download docs to get those.

For the former, there is a system algo that scans the document and ensures that it has sufficient text to be a decent readable document. But freeloaders tend to just copy paste shit, post and gain access to the study site. Students who want better quality study materials will be driven to consider PAYING for the free stuff.

And OP, this Forum actually relies on a partial freemium strategy. We have a free forum and a paid INSIDERS.

But like I said earlier, the financial numbers have to match. If the 'free side' is killing revenue to the point regular operations, keeping the lights on, suffer, then it could be a no-go.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[DVU]

I think this heavily depends on the industry you're in.

A while ago I bought a "premium" version of an audiobook player on my phone because the free version was great and they didn't lock necessary features behind a paywall.

Same thing with the course @Andy Black made that I wrote in his thread.

If he gave so much free value, how good is the stuff he's charging for? Only one way to find out.

 

[MashaN]

I think this heavily depends on the industry you're in.

Great point.
How much time do you require to spend on a regular basis to give value away?
Content creation - created ones and it gives value away for life.
Baking cookies on the other hand - well, most likely every day. That is assuming you would like them to maintain their value.

 

[Jeff Noel]

And he's in a rural area (town of 13,000...aren't you in a rural area of Canada?)

He has people drive 300-400 miles just to enter the contest. They'll often leave with a car they bought anyway and just tow it home.

Being in a rural area hasn't held him back.

And this "$5,000 car" he gives away? Yeah, he pays like $1,500 for them at auction. Only puts legit book value on them, so not a scam.

He has a local mechanic that does work for 20% off if the car was bought or won from this guy too, so not only is he networking (critical in rural areas IMO) but he adds that level of comfort that his cheaper cars won't leave you with big repair bills.

Yes, I'm in an area secluded from the big cities.

I'm writing this idea down. I know nothing about cars (except the more performance oriented stuff). I need to talk with a few people that could jumpstart this project here or even closer to bigger cities like Montreal.

My cousin lives over there and is a car junkie, he built a dozen of cars by himself and uses a car scrapyard for parts, where you pay almost nothing, but you need to pull the parts off the car by yourself (see here). I'm pretty sure this kind of project would excite him a lot, and I could definitely take care of the web portion of it with lead pages, CTAs, social medias, etc. He also has a local mechanic fora friend over there, doing mechanical miracles all day long.

You'll hear again from the project if he's interested in that (since he has way more knowledge in the matter than I do). Thank you !

 

[socaldude]

FREE is something very powerful.

Human nature and business is intrinsically tit-for-tat.

I think people are more likely to buy something if you make them feel like they got something for nothing. Especially if it is unexpected.

Starting our generous, especially if the product or service is great can lead to an upward spiral of tit for tat.

Most products and services suck and consumers are aware of this. I myself am very hesitant to buy without doing some research. The free model allows me as a consumer to take on zero risk.

 

[Nigel B]

I'm in the software industry - Freemium, Try-Before-You-Buy, you name it is central to this industry. Without a way to try the product (or online service) for free, you incur much higher sales and marketing costs. So there is a place for free in our world.

The place free does not seem to work, to me, is in the Guru space. Experts who have a huge range of expertise to offer do not need to provide it to free, for anyone, as their reputation proceeds them (and was probably built in a salaried position in industry or education before they set themselves up as a guru).

One-trick pony gurus have a real problem though. They have to give away for free what they put in other materials (hving followed other gurus advice to re-package and re-purpose) - but the game is transparent. One book purchase, and they are done.

Then there is celebrity 'free' value - building followers, and using them to generate revenue usually through JV type arrangements. Well the sheep who like to follow will buy the clothes and shoes of celebrities with no problem, so why not their cleaning service, chiropractor and dentist. Point is, the celebrities who offer free stuff (Oprah I'm looking at you) can afford to do so, and and usually only promoting a product the third party knows how to sell.

Giving stuff away sells nothing - selling is what sells. Either the product/service sells itself when exposed to the prospective buyer (MJ's backtesting service) or someone has to sell once they have a contact created by an exchange of details for access to something of value (which means it was not really free anyway).

As MJ's books say - it's all about the value created for the other party.

 

[ChrisV]

There is a very sound psychological principle behind free samples -- it's just just "giving value" or generating goodwill. The idea of reciprocation is the basis for some of very large enterprises; entire religions, cults and charities have been based on the principle. I wouldn't knock it.

Yes, this is correct. For more specific information look up “Social Reciprocity." Like I was saying regarding Robert Cialdini's research into reciprocity (among other researchers,) doing a favor for someone triggers strong feelings of indebtedness and trust.

There was an experiment where waiters gave customers a tiny mint at the end of their dinner.

Sweetening the Till: The Use of Candy to Increase Restaurant Tipping, Journal of Applied Social Psychology

A common practice among servers in restaurants is to give their dining parties an unexpected gift in the form of candy when delivering the check. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of this gesture on the tip percentages received by servers. Experiment 1 found that customers who received a small piece of chocolate along with the check tipped more than did customers who received no candy. Experiment 2 found that tips varied with the amount of the candy given to the customers as well as with the manner in which it was offered. It is argued that reciprocity is a stronger explanation for these findings than either impression management or the good mood effect.​

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2002.tb00216.x

But there’s another benefit:

The first principle is reciprocity, Cialdini said. This is a simple quid-pro-quo relationship where people feel the need to return a favor. Everyone has encountered this with the "free sample" marketing campaigns or the "free trial."

Logically, that leads into the next principle, commitment, according to Cialdini. Once someone is hooked on a product, it's easier to get him or her to commit to paying for it. When people decide or promise, they tend to stick to their word, according to this principle. If that commitment ends up being out of line with their internal beliefs, people tend to rationalize or change their beliefs to be in alignment with that choice, he said. This is also the basis of the low-ball approach favored by car salespeople, according to Cialdini, who conducted research early in his career suggesting that a preliminary decision to take an action tends to persist even after the costs of performing that action have been increased.​

And this is all aside from the fact that Sampling your product can potentially get them hooked. In every novel purchase, there’s often no way of knowing if you’re going to be ripped off or not. Sampling mitigates that risk. I heavily use Reciprocity to my advantage in business and interpersonal relationships.

Effects of a favor and liking on compliance, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103171900254


TRUST AND RECIPROCITY: AN INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENT

Link: http://www.utopie.it/documenti/documenti_esd/trust_and_reciprocity.pdf


Harvard Business Review: The Uses (and Abuses) of Influence

Link: https://www.hbr.org/2013/07/the-uses-and-abuses-of-influence


I mean you don’t have to give your first born to your customers, just a small favor. Make them feel special and make them trust your product.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Mckenzie]

I know that this opinion on this forum will be unpopular, and that it goes against what all the gurus teach, but after years of reading stories of misled entrepreneurs, I needed to make a post.

Time and time again I see people following this business model:

Give value for free --> People will eventually start paying you. --> You'll be rich.

The theory preached behind this "model" is that to make money, you have to give people value (upfront). You give them value. They understand your worth. And then if they so choose, they'll give you money.

Ok. Nothing wrong with that. However, I want to point out that this model is nothing more than a funnel. It's a marketing tactic.

It has a lot of pitfalls and potential traps for starting entrepreneurs.

For the majority of businesses, it is not a "business model" that you want your business to be centered around. It is one of many tactics that you want to try out before deciding where to allocate your sales/marketing budget, but not something that you want to bet the house on before looking elsewhere.

The biggest problem with the model is that it comes with the requirement of giving value upfront. You give before receive. In a large number of scenarios that could work, but there's one key point that this sort of thinking leaves out:

99% of people will only give you money for FUTURE value. They don't give a F*ck about what you did for them for free before.

Let's go through an example of a bakery in multiple scenarios:
A bakery wants to sell more cookies. To sell more, they have a person stand outside giving samples away.

Scenario #1 where things go well:
Because enough people try and taste the samples, a few realize that the cookies are good, and end up buying a dozen cookies each to take home. The bakery is ecstatic and considers it a success. They end up building their entire business model around giving away samples for free.

Scenario #2 where things go bad:
People try the cookies. Eat as many as they want. End up buying no cookies because they already got their sweet fix for the day. Tomorrow, or whenever they choose, they know they can get another cookie for free, so they end up buying none. The bakery goes bankrupt and the people feel bad, but not to the point where they'll donate to open the bakery up again; they'll just buy they cookies from now on.

Scenario #3 the default scenario without samples:
A bakery puts great looking cookies in the window. Whoever wants cookies, comes and gives them money for cookies.


Using this example above, gurus will tell you that Scenario #1 is the only way that you can build a business. You need to give value upfront before having a chance to receive value.

Bullshit.

Scenario #3 is the most common scenario for a reason. How many of your local bakeries are giving away top quality samples all the time for free? They might do it once in awhile, but there's little to no chance that they're doing it everyday, and if they are, they're only giving you a taste.

This is the same reason why Groupon doesn't work for most businesses.

Or why all the Youtube gurus like @AndrewNC that make videos for free end up getting zero customers. Edit: Alright, maybe they end up getting two or three and then start calling themselves successful entrepreneurs.

It is merely a funnel/marketing tactic for you to get sales.

But to get sales: YOU NEED TO CREATE FUTURE VALUE.

You need to have a product or service that is valuable enough for people to give you money. The book Ca$hvertising puts it best: For someone to give you $20, they have to believe that the $20 they're giving you is worth less than what they're getting. If they believe they're getting $30 worth of value then they'll give you money with zero hesitation.

The only time you should be giving value for free is when you're attempting to increase the perceived value. If you know your service is worth $30, and you're selling it for $20, but no one's buying, then giving away a TASTE for free is worth it to increase the perceived value from let's say $10 to $30.

But if you're giving value away for free, expecting the customer to eventually pay, then you're mistaken.

I saved a former mentor of mine millions of dollars by optimizing his supply chain. I fell into the trap of giving value away for free, assuming that eventually he would reciprocate. You know what I ended up getting? Not shit - because there was zero reason to give me a dollar other than "loyalty".

I have friends that have invested years into the wrong pursuits. I've read countless posts on this forum of people betting their business around these tactics and then wondering why they failed. Time and time again I've seen this model fail.

End of the day, it's a marketing tactic. It is not the only way to operate your business, and more often than not, it does more detriment than good.

You're a freelancer?

What's better? You writing a thousand forum posts here and on Quora? Or you creating a strong landing page and cold emailing a thousand potential clients with a few clicks?

I don't know what's better. That's for you to test and decide. But if you bet you whole business on just one tactic instead of trying multiple until you get traction, then you're an idiot and deserve to fail.

To summarize: Create a valuable product or service. Employ a multitude of tactics to get traction. More likely than not, giving value away for free is bad for your business.

I recently listened to a podcast where the guy talked about "seeds of discontent" and how charity or freebies can in fact become toxic by leading to complacency, and resentment among the very folks you intended to help. The moment I heard this while running in the morning, I stopped and contemplated on this. It resonates with me a lot when I looking back at my life and those people around me both in personal and business life.

 

[itfactor]

A little late to the party.

As a freelancer who is always on the fence on this issue, I think its important to distinguish one fact.

Giving value and demostrating value aren’t the same thing.

Using the cookie store example. Instead of giving away free samples to passerbys, demostrating value can be holding community baking classes for local families.

At the end of the day it’s about identifying what qualifies as value, extracting maximum benefits for both you and your prospects, without reducing your business into a charity.

Also, what makes something valuable can come from the opinion of those that surround us.

Instead of focusing on delivering value to just your prospects (free cookie samples), think about how you can offer collective value to a market (teach families how to bake).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[TonyStark]

I'm going to disagree here, but only because the disagreement is dependent on the ultimate value being sold.

If your cookies aren't that good, they're only good FREE, but not worth paying for.

Something worth incredible value that is given away FREE will always be paid for.

If the cookies were awesome FREE, I will pay for them later.

In a more recent example, and real, I recently took a free trial on a financial simulator and backtester. I used it for nearly a month and found it incredibly useful and valuable. I ended up converting the FREE trial into a paid one.

Why?

Because the fundamental product had incredible value.

It was only FREE because the entrepreneur wanted me to see it for myself, and risk free.

When your product is of marginal value, then I would agree with the @AgainstAllOdds post.

But when you're offering real value, the FREEMIUM model is incredibly powerful.

In fact, I used it to build my company many moons ago.

So the real question is...

Is your product of marginal value, so much so that its only true value is FREE?

Or is it of great value, so much so that people can't live without it?

The two statements highlight the difference between a PRODUCTOCRACY and a marketing company. The OP statement seems to fit in with a marketing company, not a productocracy.

Any link to that financial simulator?

 

[TonyStark]

A couple of cookies won’t hurt the business.

I think this concept is big in the guru world where people are just starting out.

But a business can’t sustain itself on free.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[masterneme]

My take on this:

I don't know what's better. That's for you to test and decide.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Jeff InfoPreneur]

Most definitely - where many people go wrong is mis-understanding or mis-reading what "value" means to your market. In many cases where you are selling a course, consulting, a solution, education, books, or many other types of products - "value" in the beginning, when you first reach your audience, is "hope"!

Someone has been trying to reach a level in their career for years but is a wit's end because they haven't been able to get there so far...so you produce content that is "valuable" in so far as you share a tip or two that gives them HOPE that you really can help them...that you have the method that will finally help them achieve (benefit) or avoid (Pain) that they have been struggling with for months/years.

When you understand this premise you stop giving away things that YOU believe are valuable and instead focus on giving away (up-front) enough that convinces your prospect that you (your business) can help them further with your paid product or services.

Way too many marketers give their own meaning to "value" to be: $ value of what they are giving, their own interpretation of what is valuable, qty (Ex long videos, books, courses, services, etc...) - these don't matter at ALL...what matters is the degree to which you reach your prospect, convince them you have the shit to help them and give them clear instructions on how to move forward from where they are today.

 

[samuraijack]

I'm not saying giving away samples is bad, but that the general wisdom that this is the only way to build a business is significantly flawed.

It's a marketing strategy, and for most industries and businesses, a suboptimal one.

Obviously for tech and information based businesses it works really well, but in other businesses (especially service based businesses), it's not necessarily the best road to take.

I never thought of it as general wisdom. I always thought people hated giving away things for free and that most business owners are reluctant to engage in this type of marketing.

There's so many different variations of "giving value for free" that i don't think its fair to group them together and say its suboptimal.

Giving out free samples is way different than becoming an authority through free video content

 

[Real Deal Denver]

You're totally wrong @JScott. I know the info you put out. I have both of your books. I bought them because they give me at LEAST 1,000 times more value than I paid for them.

I have no regrets buying your books. They provide solid value.

But, you sort of validated my point here! Much of the information in my books is available for free on my website, but if I just started charging people $20 to view my website, they wouldn't pay it --

I could (and do) spend years searching the internet for free information. I know I could dig up information for free there. On the other hand, I can read four books in a month and go from 0 to 60 and break records. I'm a serious player. In fact, the thing I don't like about the internet is how it sucks me in and I end up spiraling off in some interesting direction and waste hours. Yes, I learn a few new things - but I have to have discipline. I could spend days in the vast sea of information on the internet. That's great, except I have a list of things to accomplish. Discipline. Your books "inject" the knowledge into my brain directly. That's worth a LOT.

But I don't have to tell you that, of course. You market the way I do. Let the freebie seekers spend their time scouring the internet for free info. They know what their time is worth.

But, I will be checking out your website anyway... Wish I had more time. If you knew the hours I've been putting in the past few months. I've accomplished a lot - but - I might just quit and take two full time jobs instead. I'd make more money and work less hours. No kidding there.

Despite the great information on the net, I can't stay in the warm up area forever. I have to take make that move and step up to the home plate and hit the ball. Out of the park. Hopefully. {sigh} I like having the odds so much more on my side from the things I have learned from your books.

But, because I reframed the offering (I put the information in books and sold them on Amazon), I've convinced 100,000+ people that the information is worth $25!

Um. Wow. I guess THAT was the push I needed to confirm that I really do need to get to work on my own books. Next time you're going to hit me with a truck out of the blue, warn me first.

This was great information. Almost fainted though...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.