This post is about the concept of the “Free Line”, the line that separates stuff you give away for free from stuff that you charge for. The Free Line is a concept that I first heard Eben Pagan talk about (though I don’t know if he coined the term) and it’s one of the things that is drastically different in online marketing, compared to “traditional” offline marketing.

Read on to learn exactly what the Free Line is and how it’s placement can dramatically impact your business.

The Basic Concept

As stated above, the Free Line is simply what separates your free products from your “premium” or paid products. The first interesting point about this is that there is a part of your product range that’s available for free. I’m sure you’re no stranger to this: In online marketing, everyone’s trying to give away free stuff, right? The typical example would be a short ebook report or a freebie to download (free theme, free sample, demo-version of a program…).

When we’re talking about the Free Line, it’s about more than just having some stuff that you give away for free, however. The question is where you are placing your Free Line, in other words: How much stuff you give away and how valuable that stuff is.

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Value

Value and amount of freebies is where we see the big difference between online- and offline marketing. Offline, most things you can get for free are purely promotional (e.g. brochures, product catalogs,…). Online, you’ll often be offered real value. A brochure is something you wouldn’t pay for if you didn’t get it for free, since there’s almost no value in it. On the other hand, a limited-time trial of a piece of software has real value – as much value as the full program, during the time of the trial. And the same goes for free information products: Many businesses give away very valuable and useful information in the free guides they offer.

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Business Application

Giving away free things is valuable in three ways:

1. Reputation
   By giving away something of real value for free, you position yourself favourably with your potential customers and the better your freebie is, the more likely people will remember you.
2. Sign-Ups
   Most freebies are offered in exchange for an e-mail address. In fact, giving away free things is the most popular list-building technique out there.
3. Trust
   The prospect can get an idea of your quality standard by checking out your free offering. If you’re giving away something really awesome for free, then your premium products must be worth looking at.

Eben Pagan says that you should give away your best stuff for free, then create something better and sell that. He recommends that you push the free line further back, offer more things and more valuable things for free and then scale your prices in the back end. He himself lives this principle in his businesses: He always gives away a lot of valuable stuff and on the premium side, he holds $10’000 seminars, among other things.

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Your Free Line

Are you aware of where you have placed the free line in your business? If it doesn’t exist yet (common in e-commerce and brick-and-mortar businesses), how can you create it? What is the best thing you can afford to give away for free? If you already have a free line, how can you push it back? How can you give away more value?

Whatever you do, don’t be afraid of the free line plunging you into poverty. If you’ve been watching the recent big launches in the make money online market, you’ve probably seen very generous free offers in the pre-launches. For example, Frank Kern gave away one of his earlier big courses and a very interesting list-building script during the pre-launch of List Control. We’ve seen many examples, lately, of marketers pushing back the free line and still raking in millions with their premium product.

What has your experience with free giveaways been? Do you appreciate them as a customer? Do you like to give things away to your prospects? Let me know in the comments!

Cheers,

Here’s how this works:

Step 1: You watch the video below, in which Gary Vaynerchuk says a lot of awesome things, then makes a huge blunder and then says some more awesome things.

Step 2: Watch the next video, below the first one, where I rant about how incredibly wrong Gary was with his statements about Internet marketing.

Step 3: Read the few paragraphs at the end, where I elaborate on some essential points.

GO

Video Interview: Dean Hunt, Ciaran Doyle and Gary Vee

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My Response

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Some Important Points

First of all, in my video it almost comes off as if I’m saying all offline businesses or all big corporate businesses are unethical. That wasn’t my intention, of course.

My point is simply that there are unethical businesses and ethical businesses, online as well as off. Likewise, there “good” marketing and marketing that “just isn’t right” as Gary puts it. And this is also true online as well as offline.

Note that I’m not saying all  Internet marketing is good and holy. There’s a lot of spammy and scammy marketing going on, online. And unfortunately, the spammiest marketers are usually the most prevalent, the ones you encounter most often and the ones that you get annoyed by the most frequently.

Internet marketing as a whole is no better and no worse than non-Internet marketing. However, a large portion of online marketing consists of individuals or small groups that are very busy producing great value for free and building lasting relationships with relatively small groups of customers. And if more people get involved in this type of marketing and the paradigm shifts ever further in that direction, then that’s clearly a blessing for everyone involved.

At least, that’s my take on this. What do you think?

Step 4: Tell me what you think in the comments below.

Cheers,

Incoming search terms for the article:

• ciaran doyle scam
• gary vaynerchuk content SEO video
• gary vaynerchuk scam
• offline internet marketer from anywhere

But I haven’t given up yet, so here’s another installment of Link Love Friday:

• PPC vs. Yahoo Answers on SEOmoz
  Once again, the people over at SEOmoz manage to produce content that I just need to link to (even though they hardly need my promotion). This is a case study in which classic PPC is pitched against using Yahoo Answers for generating leads and the results are quite surprising.
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• Affiliate Marketing Not Dead After All by Ben Moskel
  After Google dropped a huge ban-hammer on thousands of Adwords accounts, there was something of a panic-reaction to be seen on some blogs and in forums. In the above post, Ben Moskel provides a very level-headed analysis of what probably went on behind the scenes and pretty much nips the “death of affiliate marketing” idea in the bud.
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• Gary Vaynerchuk Adressing Internet Marketers on Traffic Cafe
  In this video, Gary Vaynerchuck is interviewed by Dean Hunt and Ciaran Doyle. It’s a very interesting video and Gary specifically addresses Internet marketers with an important message. He also completely misrepresents Internet marketing and gets quite a lot completely wrong. You’ll be seeing more about this from me, very soon. In the meantime, make sure to watch that video.

And that’s this weeks (late) Link Love Friday. Enjoy! And if you ever have recommendations for these posts, let me know! I love to read up on interesting and fresh material concerning anything SEO, marketing, website building or general “make money” related.

Cheers,