Why giving something for free

You give them something to get excited about, basically. You want them to want more and that's when you can start your email follow ups and the sales process.
It doesn;t mater how big or small your niche or site is, the most important thing you want them to do when they visit your website, is to get them on your list. If they leave without signing up on your list, they are gone forever. (generally speaking)

Of course you can start selling to them straight away, but I guess it depends what your vision of doing business is. There are pros and cons for both ways of list building.

I find that if you help people out for free they always are generous in return. I’m going to give you a great example of how I did this in the online marketing space. Everyone is afraid of “black hat” marketers stealing their products, spending time to protect their work. I actually decided to do the exact opposite.

Giving away something for free can function as a way to presell an offer you are promoting.

If you provide value for free, and people trust you then they are more likely to buy from you. That's why people build a funnel with a free offer in order to make sales in their follow up.

It works, that's why people do it.

Hi,

It's all about the K.L.T. factor...

...KNOW, LIKE & TRUST!!!

Do your subscribers know, like & trust you?

Once these 3 pillars are in place the need to have to sell, sell, sell
isn't required.

It is all about the RESPONSE you get from your subscribers.

All the best,

Gavin

Giving something away to get an opt in is one of the best ways to grow your list. There will always be freebie seekers, but if you can grow a list the right way and garner more potential customers than freebie speakers, you'll be on track to profiting massively from your list.

Arbitrage.

Hi.

A really good question, and you have got several decent answers, as well.

I agree on the answers you have gotten, but I have another view on this. Probably, because my background as an offline marketer in the brick and mortar world.

When you want to sell a product to a "cold" customer you need to show him/her the same offer many times. Old marketing books say about eight times, more than less.

This is the reason you see an ad in a magazine or newspaper over and over again, hear commercial several times on radio, or see the same commercial in a TV ad repeatedly.

This is a very expensive way of doing marketing leaving the field wide open to the big dogs.

Another way of doing the same, in a much inexpensive way, is via e-mail marketing. You find a legal way of collecting your potential customer e-mail address, and you promote the same offer over and over again until he buys or leaves you in the dust :-)

One way not to piss off the potential customer is to build trust via giving valuable info as well as promoting your product in a good mix.

The reason you don't see the big dogs doing this, as you point out, can be because they don't know how or the value of it yet, or because they feel they don't need to. They have the money to promote in old fashioned way.

Don't forget that direct marketer is at least one or two horse-heads ahead of ordinary sales organisations.

Most people in here know a lot more about direct respond marketing then the big companies do, and I bet that in some year henceforth you will see big companies give away cheep psychical products in exchange for the customer's e-mail address. That is at least my prediction for the future.

People incorrectly say this is giving someone something for free. But its really not. The people are 'paying' with their email address. Its a trade, barter, and is not free. That being said I personally like doing low cost product sales over giving a freebie.

Yes this definitely could be argued both way because you cold be giving away things for free and potentially collecting people's addresses who are not willing to pay but just want more free stuff - on the other hand if you just ask them for the email then your percentage might drop for optin but they will be a bit more targeted.

It isn't because you have a small site. It's because no one knows who you are. Giving someone a sample of what you can offer before asking for money is a way to get past that, build the know, like and trust factor, and even build some of the reciprocity NicheMan mentioned.

One reason it may not make sense to an observer is that so many marketers get it wrong. They make the freebie the whole focus of the opt-in offer, rather than a sample or bonus.

Next time you go to a mall, visit the food court. Odds are, at least one of the vendors will be offering small bits of food to taste. Some of the people who take the sample will decide to buy their meal from that vendor. If the meal is good enough, they'll buy from that vendor again and again.

No, most of the big sites aren't hawking free reports and such, because that isn't their business. Most are more subtle about it.

> Are they running a contest or sweeps? You need to give them an email to enter.

> Do they have a "birthday club" or "fan club" that promises a freebie for joining? You need to give them an email to enter.

> Even mighty Amazon will let you read the first 10% of just about any ebook they sell - but you have to have an Amazon account. Which requires an email address.

Bottom line, it's plain physics that it's easier to keep a body in motion than to get it started in the first place. Offering the right freebie takes away a lot of friction and reduces the effort need to get that body in motion.

I think you need to watch this

The problem with freebies is that people think that it is cheap quality product if it is free

There's a fine line.

Free stuff can help get people on your list but you have to be careful you aren't just getting freebie seekers or "anyone and everyone" who aren't much use to you.

You want targeted subscribers who will go on to buy from you.

So when giving away something free make sure the core reason for people joining your list isn't just to get something free.