There is no doubt that the idea of giving away something for free to draw in customers is a tried and tested tactic. The principle is simple: get them in, get them hooked, and then get them to pay.

However, over recent years there has been a step change in the way ‘free’ is being used by online services. Instead of being used to draw in customers in order to up-sell them to a paid version, free is just, well, free. The change has been quick and quite dramatic in many ways.

This is thanks largely due to the premium quality products and services we can now get without having to spend a penny. We take the likes of Google’s free services (search, maps, email, cloud storage…) 100% for granted, and that attracts other smaller companies and other brands to attempt to do the same in their field. In some areas, the idea of paying for a service is now met with derision such is the prevalence of free. Would you pay to use a search engine or to access the likes of GMail? Right now, me neither, but if Google and Microsoft put up a pay wall maybe that would change?

Web design is one area that has seen an explosion in the quality and prevalence of free resources over the past few years. Every year the bar seems to be raised to new heights regarding what is being given away for free, in terms of design resources (e.g. https://365psd.com/) or simply knowledge through articles (e.g. https://psd.tutsplus.com/). Casual web site owners, or designers looking to create a website cheaply, can easily create a great looking website without having to spend any money at all.

Many services (such as Google or Smashing Magazine) use advertising to plug the financial hole that must be filled to continue operating. What is interesting is the attitude users are now developing to that idea, with the likes of Twitter and Facebook experience huge negativity in their attempts to simply make money form a service they provide for free.

As people come to expect to get services for free, to the point where attempts to make money experience a back lash, should businesses still follow this model? The risk they run is the short term gain will then be followed by long term pain, once the company attempts to monetise all the free users it has attracted.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts below about whether you think following this model is worth pursuing. Have you ever done it? If so, how effective was it?