The Free Line is a Moving Target
Oct 12 2007

Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur’s Journey recently did a post called Moving The Free Line that I found fascinating.   He states: The idea is that there is a line, a point on your sales funnel where you distribute free value, and below the line comes all the paid-for products, moving from front to back-end.

Now I’ve always struggled with the “give things away for free” concept because of the ‘you get what you pay for’ mantra.  So if I’m going to get something for free I initially wonder if I’m about to get a lot of headaches trying to make things work.  But amazingly some of the best online services I use are free and they have wonderful customer service and wonderful products.  However, I do wonder how they make money and how they can sustain their businesses over time.  What is it about the web that makes giving away things for free so necessary and easy? 

Yaro gives us ideas about when and how to move The Free Line and even gives us a picture for those of us who need pictures to help us visualize the concept.

 

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, it’s always a challenge to figure out what to give away for free.  We do have free applications and are exploring how to give away more for free but at the same time attract more in return.  It has been an interesting mental exercise and doing business online takes the whole ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum a step further in my opinion.

So the big question is:  “How do we make more money by giving more stuff away for free?”  Is the answer simply selling advertisements?  I don’t think so but I have yet to figure out what a different or better model might be.

Author: Aruni | Filed under: entrepreneurship | Tags: ad money, advertisements, giving away products, sales funnel, selling products, the free line | 4 Comments »

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