Well, are you addicted to free in every aspect of life, Jordan?
Thing is, I'm also a cheapskate concerning some things. Many things, actually. For example, I don't give a hoot about fashion. You can tell me about the benefits of a particular pair of jeans all day long and I'll still end up buying the cheapest one available.

But in other things, there's money to be gotten out of me. When it comes to business, I spend a lot of money. On things that can make more money back. From simple things like good hosting for my sites to more complex things like a solid CMS for a store, tracking and testing software etc.
Basically, when it comes to business, I'm willing to spend whatever I have if I know what I'm spending it one can make more than it's price back.

And then, there are gadgets. I'm a bit of a gadget geek and this is where I spend unreasonably. I'll spend more than I like to admit for a new, shiny gadget that has a larger screen and more features than the previous one.

I think almost everyone has these three categories: Things they refuse to spend on, things they spend on reasonably (even if it's just food) and things they spend on unreasonably.

If not, or if what I'm selling is in your "spedning refusal" category, then you are not a potential customer of mine and I will make zero effort and spend zero money trying to sell to you. That's called targeting. :)

Shane, I'm exactly the same way as you. Typically I don't pay much for the "essentials" but when it comes to my "passions", I have no problem opening my wallet a bit more.

Although I think there's some value marketing towards those who will never spend a dime on your offerings - through word of mouth & spreading the message to those who are buyers... it's definitely not something you want to focus on to the derelict of all other avenues of business.

Yes, I agree with that. A big part of most marketing strategies nowadays is giving stuff away for free. There will always be those who only grab your free stuff and never turn into customers and that's completely okay. Apart from the fact that it's nice to provide value even if you don't get paid every single time (see: blogging), the freebie-seekers will also contribute to the buzz around your product, spread the message etc.

So, to answer your original question: I don't get you to buy anything, but hopefully, I can provoke you to get some of my free stuff and make a video complaining about it. :D
(I'm assuming that any publicity is good publicity - which is probably not true)

I read something on DavidRisley.com the other day where it was talking about it's very difficult to give stuff away for free. The only way as Mike CJ says it to give something of such value that people will want it no matter what it costs.

Think Apple here and the ques for the new iPhone.

I'm not a cheap bastard. I'm a sexy bastard, but I can still five my 2 cents worth. You just have to create a super great product or service that can't be gained through free channels. Then get the people around the cheap bastards who have bought your product to let them know how much benefit they have received from the product or service. Eventually the cheap bastard will feel like a loser and will give in. It's that simple. Lol!

I've read a little bit of what Happy here had to say and I agree.

I'd make it sound like it's extremely crazy great stuff that you want to get your hands on and make it an insanely low price... For just a very short time and then raise the price high. If you end up buying it at a low price and stick with it for a high price, you know it's gotta be good unless you drop out and never come back.

Selling isn't easy which is why trust is so crucial. Just my thoughts.

What do you think?

Back before I took my business seriously, I'd spend 20 hours doing something that I could've paid someone to do in 10 minutes. Now that I take my business seriously, I pay people to do the work that I don't want to...suddenly, I have time to work on the bigger stuff.

The people that don't want to pay for anything aren't customers anyway...I say blacklist their IP.

Nathan, you're probably never going to buy any product from me... so do you want me to blacklist you? :-)

I do agree with you in a Pareto's Principle type of way... putting 80% of your time into something that only amounts to 20% of your success is very unproductive and will likely see you fail.

Actually, who knows, I buy a lot of stuff.

However, I assumed your post was facetious. If it wasn't then I'm not sure what to tell you. The people that would search all day for a torrent instead of paying 9.99 are likely to never be my customer and that's one reason I created my members area...in order to differentiate between readers and customers.

I like the fact you're kind of drawing a line in the sand with your blog.

...and you're right, the people that will fight you every step of the way about paying for something are not ever likely to be your customers no matter what you do. That's why it's imperative for businesses to cater to those who would, regardless if a big slice of traffic are just "window shoppers".

Yep...and exactly why some numbers lie.

I can send you a free copy of my ebook. Just send $19.99 for shipping and handling, and as a bonus if you order right now I will throw in a free subscription to my RSS feed.

I have to agree I am a cheapskate too, but I have had too much business training to not recognize the value on paying for some things. That said, bring on the free!
Justin
PS I am looking for that polish site of MikeCJ's....I may have to buy something from him after all...

I think you're wrong Jordan. I don't think there is a small group of people who are cheap bastards who want everything free.

The whole world is like that! You, me and everyone else on the planet.

I get my news from the BBC website. Free. If they started charging me tomorrow, I'd be outraged. I;d write to the Prime Minister about it.

I read way too many blogs, every single day. All free, occasionally gaining priceless information.

BUT. I pay $100 a year to read a Car Magazine. I pay $200 a month for some web stuff. Then there's that site in Poland........

What they have in common is that they provide me with either:

1/ Pleasure
2/ Information I simply can't get free
3/ A time saving, and time for me is money

So the way to market to cheapskates like us, is to make a compelling case that we'll either save time, get something we just can't get for free, or get laid.

#3 is likely the most important factor, I believe.

With information becoming more and more abundant, we can eventually hit a tipping point where *ALL* info can be found for nothing - it's going to be hard to differentiate with scarcity then.

Promoting the fact that a potential customer can save valuable time by parting with some cash - I really think that's going to be *the* top selling point for marketers to use in the coming years.

PS. Buy one of my products and I'll hook you up with the Polish site :)

Pitch the club, sorry forum, where secret information is going to be shared.

Make it sound like only a few great people, like you, will be allowed in. No losers, just brilliant friends like you..

Set a price that rapidly escalates. So todays price is $3. But by the end of the week the price is going to jump to $3000.

Offer access to free stuff once you join the club. Secret free stuff that is the real way to make money for instance.

Pretend that I am forming an alliance with you. And then charge you for stuff we need to make the alliance work.

Make up a story about how for just a small amount of cash you can just sit back and make money by using the uninformed masses. Because we are friends. And you and I are smarter than everyone else.

Say that this secret stuff is a one time fee only. Payable in 12 monthly payments of course.

BTW, I didn’t know you liked free movies. I’ve got a small exclusive group together that are downloading the latest movies risk free. We each chip in $1/day (price of a cup of coffee really) each month to keep our site exclusive.
As it turns out we are looking for just one more person to round out our group.
If you are interested we can show you how to download movies without any fear of legal repercussions. (Our group has lawyers, judges and politicians on it so we know the secrets)
We are looking for special people like yourself to align with. People we can share this amazing information with. Our motto is “no average joes, just brilliant people”

Oh, and a few of the elite group are thinking that we should raise the price of admission to our group to $1000 a month. To stop the losers from pestering us to join. So if you want to join us then now is the time. The $1/ day fee won’t last very much longer.
I’ll reserve a spot for you..

Your new best friend and partner,
Glen

ps: I'm not trying to pressure you into joining. Downloading movies on your own without the support of a group like ours appeals to some people. And some people adapt well to prison life. Some also like taking showers with other burly horny guys.
People in my group would prefer paying $1/day to prevent that but we are an elite group who don't relish the thought of being raped in the shower. By men anyways, ha,ha..

Brilliant!

Agreed. Glen, this was really funny, dude... I almost feel bad that it's a comment here and not a post on your own blog!

You could go one step further and take advantage of all those 'X day money back guarantee' for actual paid things. Say you don't like it, no questions asked, money back. Everything is free!

I couldn't do that personally, I'm too honest. Unless the product I bought was actually no good to me then I probably would but even then feel bad for doing so. I guess that's why they work but I'm sure there are some people taking a big advantage of those 'X day money back guarantees'

Great points, you know I am a cheap bastard too! I think there is value in free, that building up to paid is ok too.

We had this debate on Skype yesterday, and I am all for people making $$ with their websites, but everything can't cost money on the internet.

So the real question I ask myself, is what is actually worthy of charging for? I still wrestle with that question, and it is one I have asked David before too (Risley).

I wish I could charge for ALL my content, but if everyone did that, it would cost me too much to find other content to rip off....

Value is always in the eye of the beholder. Just because you don't believe something has value doesn't mean other people think the same, right?

As Mike has said, I think a lot of the value of content comes from the convenience factor. You can accumulate more money, but your time will always be finite. There have been plenty of products & services I bought that I could have done/found myself solely because the price was worth saving the hassle. Don't you agree?

Jordan,
I'm addicted to free also (explains why I don't have a self-hosted blog). There's no real solution for selling to people like us. The key is that there are masses of people out there willing to spend money on any crap they can get there hands on. If a marketer plays their cards right, the most they can get out of the free addicts is to hope we will mention their product (even in a bad way) to one of those that are addicted to buying crap.
So they get us to work from them as salesmen even though we think that we're dissing them. Of course this doesn't really work on me because I don't even MENTION stuff that costs money (except for the self-hosted blogging thingy I said earlier).

Ileane, there must be a solution though... you buy things normally in your everyday life, right? Of course, many of these things can be considered essential "necessities"... but what would it take to convince you to buy something that's a "want" or a luxury?