{"id":4923,"date":"2009-10-02T09:50:15","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T09:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/?p=4923"},"modified":"2009-10-02T09:50:15","modified_gmt":"2009-10-02T09:50:15","slug":"increase-revenue-by-selling-it-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/increase-revenue-by-selling-it-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase revenue by selling it free!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/eelssej_\/401919914\/\"> <img decoding=\"async\" title=\"free hugs\" src=\"\/blog_assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/free-hugs.png\" alt=\"free hugs\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div >\n<p>Offering a product or service for free to give people a \u2018taste\u2019 is a tried and tested sales technique that has been applied extensively online.\u00a0 There are three concepts of offering your services free&#8230;<\/p>\n<h4>1. Full product 100% free:<\/h4>\n<h4>2. Free trial:<\/h4>\n<h4>3. Separate scaled down product:<\/h4>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/web-hosting\" target=\"_blank\">web hosting<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mailchimp.com\/pricing\/\" target=\"_blank\">MailChimp<\/a> who offer a free version of their email delivery and tracking service and Serif through their specialist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freeserifsoftware.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">free software<\/a> website.<\/p>\n<h4>What are the advantages?<\/h4>\n<h4>Reduced perceived risk:<\/h4>\n<h4>Market impact:<\/h4>\n<h4>Link bait:<\/h4>\n<h4>Up-sell and cross-sell opportunities:<\/h4>\n<h4>What are the pitfalls?<\/h4>\n<h4>The free version is too good!:<\/h4>\n<h4>Drain on resources:<\/h4>\n<h4>No upgrade path built in:<\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Offering a product or service for free to give people a \u2018taste\u2019 is a tried and tested sales technique that has been applied extensively online.\u00a0 There are three concepts of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-your-business","category-your-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heartinternet.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}