It's A Free E-world

By Author: Richard Wall
Total Articles: 1
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Read this article and I'll give you 109 Killer Reports on
Internet marketing! Yes 109 FREE bonus reports just for reading
this article!

Does that sound familiar?

Internet marketers have gone 'free mad'. Freebies have their
rightful place in the online marketing bag of tricks: 'subscribe
to my Ezine and I'll give you a free eBook' and 'order this and
I'll give you a bonus product' are often used to great effect.
However, many Internet marketers seem to have 'lost the plot.'

If you have a sensibly priced product with a money-back
guarantee, do you really need to pack in 10 'bonus products' to
sell it?

I nearly added another eBook to my library last week. My cursor
was hovering on the 'Order Now' button but I decided not to
click. Guess what put me off? Too expensive? No, the price was
fine. Not enough freebies? No. There were too MANY freebies and
by the time I got to reading about how 'Bonus #9' would change my
life, I'd lost interest in the eBook I was about to buy. My state
of mind had shifted from enthusiastic ...
... to suspicious.

The perceived value of the eBook I was about to buy got lower as
more and more bonus products were added to the deal.

Imagine an offline retailer, who normally sells a chocolate bar
for 50 cents, with a special offer: '3 bars for the price of 2.'
Or a travel agent with an offer on a vacation: 'book today and
get 20% discount.' The offline marketing world is full of deals
and offers - because they work. And of course, they work online
too.

But what would you think if the retailer had said: 'buy this
chocolate bar today for 50 cents and I'll give you 5 bonus
products: a cigarette, some gum, 2 paper clips, last month's free
ads newspaper and a comb'? You'd think he was out of his mind -
all you wanted was a chocolate bar.

On the Internet - at least at the home-based entrepreneur end of
the market - an unwritten law seems to have crept in which says
that to get the sale you need to bundle in lots of free products.

It's a fine line between adding value to your products and
DEVALUING them. I'm selling my own eBook for $15 and yes, I throw
in a free eBook as a bonus. But there's only one AND it's
complementary to the eBook I'm selling, not just complimentary.
The free eBook is a useful and relevant bonus. If I was to load
up the offer with 5 other bonus products, it would make the whole
deal cluttered and unnecessarily 'generous'. I would get fewer
sales.

Until very recently I also included the sales pitch 'buy my eBook
for $15 TODAY and I'll throw in a free eBook.' I've taken out the
word 'TODAY' because I don't have any plans to withdraw the free
bonus tomorrow (or the day after for that matter.) If you DO have
a real price rise around the corner or a genuine limited period
offer, that's fine. However, many of the Internet marketing
offers I see include something like 'order by this Friday, 19
January.' and when I see the same ad the following month it says
'order by this Friday, 9 February.' JAVA scripts and suchlike
have allowed Internet marketers to invent a new concept: a
rolling 'this Friday.'

Oh, and have you seen the 'buy this eBook for $29.95 TODAY and
I'll give you a marketing course worth $1,495 absolutely FREE'
offer? Does the prospective customer really perceive the free
marketing course to be worth $1,495? I don't think so. The word
'credibility' springs to mind!

Finally, if you want the 109 bonuses I promised, I'll try and
find some of the free 'Killer Reports' I've acquired over the
past few months. Now, let me see, which folder did I save them
in...? ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Wall left the rat race in 1994. He has 6 years of
home-based business experience and his new eBook 'Residual Dream'
includes valuable hype-busting information for home-based
entrepreneurs.
http://www.squillionaires.com
mailto:richard@wallpotential.com