Offering a product or service for free to give people a ‘taste’ is a tried and tested sales technique that has been applied extensively online.  There are three concepts of offering your services free…

1. Full product 100% free:

2. Free trial:

3. Separate scaled down product:

This post will focus on the benefits (and potential pit falls) of creating a free standalone product to draw customers in and focus on upgrading them to paying customers. Examples of providing free versions of their services include ourselves at Heart Internet with free web hosting, MailChimp who offer a free version of their email delivery and tracking service and Serif through their specialist free software website.

What are the advantages?

Reduced perceived risk:

Market impact:

Link bait:

Up-sell and cross-sell opportunities:

What are the pitfalls?

The free version is too good!:

Drain on resources:

No upgrade path built in: