Are You Sick Of Free Reports?
Hey Everyone,
Hands up whose email inbox has took a pounding this week?
I know mine has!
Promotional email after promotional email.
It seems to be a week for launches of new FREE products.
As you know I disappeared off the Internet Marketing scene for a while so on my return I signed up to a few mailing lists for a quick catch up.
It seems that FREE is the new way to sell, with free / greatly reduced cost trial memberships coming in a close second.
I don’t have a problem with getting stuff for free, heck I love it!
And I think trial memberships are the greatest thing a membership site owner can offer you too.
I love to have a look around and test run a membership before I buy.
But it seems there is a new generation of marketers online, the freebie givers.
Now of course we all know it’s easier to give something away for free rather than sell something.
But when I am continually sent emails with freebie after freebie after freebie it starts to wear a bit thin.
The initial excitement of getting a free report is wearing off fast.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to get free stuff of high value, I honestly do.
But most of these offers are so blatantly just a ploy for instant commissions it’s becoming irritating.
I was recently signed up to receive a newsletter from a guy online (I wont name him) but all he does it send me links to download his “friends” latest free report.
This guy must be the most popular guy in the world he has so many “friends”.
Almost every second day I am sent another email with another freebie.
There has never been any sign of the promised newsletter with outstanding content I signed up for.
If I had signed up for every freebie offer he sent me so far, I would now be on another 18 other marketers mailing lists in just under 3 weeks.
Now there is a recipe for information overload if ever I seen one.
I know I told you that when you are strapped for cash, freebies are the way to educate yourself.
But choose your freebies carefully or before you know it, you will have emails from 50 marketers all promoting more freebies and products.
I finally unsubscribed from that guy’s list because the freebie emails with no other content except a two liner email saying “Grab your free access to this gift from my friend because it’s brilliant” eventually got on my nerves.
Do not overuse the power of giving away free reports, choose freebies you offer wisely.
And if you must use this method of making money, at least include some real content in your emails and / or rotate it a little, don’t just fire freebie after freebie at your subscribers.
We all know that by giving away freebies from other marketers we can ultimately make money.
I honestly don’t mind that, if I get a link to a truly outstanding report for free I am over the moon.
If I happen to buy a future product from that person, and my referrer gets a commission, that’s great, after all they recommended me to the report in the first place.
What I do have a problem with is marketers promoting every free report they can find just to try and pump me for the chance of commissions.
I don’t believe that person has my best interests at heart, I believe they are only after commissions.
Promote a free report because it contains outstanding quality.
If you then make a commission, great!
If you don’t make a commission, at least your subscribers still know you are not just trying to cash in on them.
I for one do not intend to rapidly fire freebies at my own subscribers, quite frankly my subscribers deserve more than that.
This may be stupid on my part, I will probably lose out on lots of commission but I don’t care.
I will not promote a free report just for the sake of a commission.
Online Marketers often forget that a mailing list is not just a list of random email addresses, they are the emails of real people, people who put their trust in you when they first signed up to your mailing list.
If you promise a newsletter, give them a newsletter.
Be very honest when you are building a mailing list, tell people EXACTLY what they can expect from you then they won’t sign up if they don’t want to.
Don’t trick people into signing up, then force feed them your affiliate link stuffed emails, this puts you on a slippery slope to lots of spam complaints and unsubscribes.
Be straight with people, and treat them how you would like to be treated.
If you are not making money from emails you send out, I can guess it’s because all you do is send out promotion after promotion after promotion.
That is not the way to make money from email marketing.
Treat your subscribers with the respect they deserve, don’t just try to make a fast buck from them.
Be like me, only ever offer a free report if it contains true value for your subscribers like the one I am about to tell you about…
And if you read on, you will see I am not doing it for a COMMISSION FROM YOU.
My friend (and he actually is my friend) Alex Jeffreys is offering a free copy of his “Gurus Nightmare” report.
You won’t find a sneaky upsell, or a one time offer, just a free report with great content, that every Internet Marketer should read, both experienced and newbie ones.
The report is free, and it will open your eyes to Internet Marketing in a way they have never been opened up before.
I have great respect for Alex and I always recommend his products, paid or free.
This report is free.
Future reports offered to you may cost money.
Using my affiliate link, means if you buy anything from Alex in the future, I get a commission.
If you don’t use my affiliate link, I wont get a commission.
So just to prove I am not just after a commission from you, here is two links to access the free report.
Not My Affiliate Link Click Here
I think that will show you how much I want you to read the report.
Even if you choose to use the link that doesn’t benefit me, I don’t care, just so long as you read Alex’s report.
I know almost everyone trying to make money from an online business will relate to Alex’s report in many ways.
He started off selling mini motorcycles (of all things!) on eBay and progressed to his successful status today, whilst still keeping his reputation and morals intact.
A truly down to earth, trustworthy guy, that’s why I like Alex so much.
Download his report, there is nothing to buy today, just 100 pages of pure honesty, sprinkled with lots of spelling mistakes, written by a guy who deserves success simply because of the amount of help he gives to other people.
Take Care,
Sally 
P.S. If you want to sign up as an Affiliate for Alex, and give away the report to your subscribers for free go here:
Alex Jeffreys Affiliate Sign Up
PPS. Have you filled out my quick survey yet? You can fill it out here: Sally’s Quick Survey
Filed under: Internet Marketing
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Hi
If ihad to down load hever free reporte my Pc would be over loaded.
Jim
Hi Sally,
I agree with you wholeheartedly!
It’s because everybody’s swapping lists with everybody else – the trouble is that most people doing this are fairly new themselves, and are concentrating on building a list because they’ve been told that’s what they must do. Being quite new themselves they have little to offer of any value!
I’m a newbie myself (in terms of income!) but have been around long enough to be able to ignore most emails – I probably only open about 5% of mine. I just feel very sorry for the ‘new newbies’ who will spend all their time opening these emails and joining lists.
So a tip for those people – pick one product, or one marketer and get started in earnest. Put the blinkers on and concentrate on one thing only till you’ve given it a fair shot.
And also a warning – a lot of this free stuff is actually out-of-date PLR, so it may be getting you off on totally the wrong foot anyway. I recently paid a small amount for something from a reasonably well-known ‘B’ list marketer, and had to contact him to tell him off for selling me old info that was no longer relevant!
So good for you Sally! I’m proposing you start the revolt and we’ll all follow!
Sue
Twitter: edsonbuchanan
says:
Hi Sally,
There are a load of free reports these days. Now after catching up a little about it at the warrior forum, it seems that its the new way to build a list fast, trade free reports to other lists.
Now I have to say after trying it out for a few weeks the results are impressive but the biggest thing is what you said…giving away quality content.
I always make sure and read the free reports before sending them out as I want to make sure my readers are getting a quality product.
oh and I also only mail out twice a week as I know what your talking about receiving emails from the same “guy” everyday which I never even open or read.
Thanks Sally,
Edson Buchanan
man you got that right ,I get 50 emails a day and and 20 calls about reports and selling me something
Hi Sally.
Being a fairly new newby,I must be a hot contender for setting a world record for collecting, and keeping,the biggest load of freebie garbage. As a newbie the confusing thing is finding a mentor who has the knowledge, integrity, and ability to provide good honest advice,at a reasonable price. Most people setting out to build an imternet business, are looking to acquire as much information as possible, for the minimum cost. That’s why freebies are so popular, but, (as in my case) result in masses of emails promising the earth, delivering very little, and causing massive information overload, total confusion, and no progress.
I am glad I responded to your email though Sally,
because I am now looking no further than you, to get me started. At the end of this Easter break, I will have cleared out all the rubbish I have collected on my PC, ready for a new start.
Best regards Dave V
I quite agree – all the ‘list swapping’ where “my friend xxx has this great new yyy etc…” is really tedious after a while.
Sometimes I wonder if the people doing this realise that they are turning their potential customers off rather than on?
Do you think they will ever realise that the emails they are so assiduously collecting by this method are generally one-time use throwaway ones that no sane person would use for actually buying stuff?
As for the free memberships etc… well let’s face it Alex (together with Lee and others) is pushing much the same thing in essence – give, give, give… make your prospects grateful, get them feeling they owe you… and then slam comes the thousands of pounds (oops, dollars) worth of real product (seminar, course, system, scheme, membership, …) and an abrupt back to earth shock.
The problem is that the more product is given away (by more and more people) the less the prospective customers are in need of buying stuff. On top of that, once people get used to having nearly everything for free they begin to resent being expected to pay anything for stuff. And on top of that they have already learned much of what they need to know (the techniques, models, methods, sources, resources etc) from the freebies already.
When so many of the giveaways are of pretty much the best quality on the market already (a far cry from the badly copied A4 sheets of a few decades ago in direct mail marketing) why do they need to pay for more of the same?
It’s not just in IM that this happens. A couple of years ago I became involved in the Open Source movement which is basically the model Alex et al are promoting at the moment in IM. The main product is given away – the tangible side of things. Then the monetising model on top is support for use of the free parts with additional paid modules to make life easier. See MySQL as a typical example – you can do anything at all with that for nothing… but if you don’t want to take time to learn how to build things or tune up your system you can pay someone else to operate your free software setup for you. Some people (mainly non-techy business people) will just go straight in and pay for the support contracts etc. More techie people and those with less money and more time will use the free facilities and hence don’t provide any monetary return to the people who develop and maintain the software in the first place.
So it’s a business model that works… but it can have unintended consequences.
To be able to sell product/services on top of a free model it’s necessary to have something spectacular that isn’t free – not just more of the same as the free part.
Sorry, rambling a bit there.
I DO like the freebie model and it’s one I have always used when distributing my products and services in the past. But it works less well when, as is always the case, the market catches up with the same business model and floods things.
Seems likely to me that there will be something of a backlash in a year or so when a lot of people discover that when everything is being given away free – not just if you happen to find it but having it actually pushed at you – there is no scope for monetisation because the potential buyers are already sated.
At that point the only way to monetise will be to charge massive entry sums to make up for the loss of all the relatively passive mass trickle of steady small price selling items.
Paid physical/digital product, in fact, will become obsolete in the sense of books, and videos and even software (lots of free online apps now). What we will be left with is selling ourselves – our personal time and attention. And that’s a whole new ball game – and can’t be outsourced!
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hi Jim, thank you for your comment, it’s good you are selective about which freebies you download or yes, your pc couldn’t cope under the strain.
Hi Sue, completely agree with you, the list swapping frenzy has certainly played a major part in the increase of freebies. I hope you got a refund for your out of date plr, shame on that person for even promoting it.
Hi Edson, I can see why people benefit from that type of marketing, I just personally don’t want to do it. I am on your mailing list and have never had any complaints about the emails you send send me, so you are not the type of marketer that irritates me.
Hey S.S.Inc, I am surprised you get any work done with that amount of emails and calls. Just be careful what you sign up for in future. Don’t be afraid to unsubscribe if you are unhappy about how often you are contacted by other people.
Hello Dave, yep the good old information overload will get you every time. Hope I can help you move forward with your business minus the b.s.
Hi Pat, thank you for comment, no I don’t think marketers realise that constantly pushing freebies has a detrimental effect.
I understand the email addresses they are collecting are of no real value and have a short shelf life, hence they overwhelm you with constant emails to get the most out of you before you escape their clutches.
Sadly, some people are still of the mentality that the bigger the list the bigger the profits.
I enjoyed reading your views on the ultimate end to which people will be selling their time. In fact, so many marketers have already moved onto this and use it as a carrot to sell their money making products, when really they only started to make the big bucks once they started to sell their private coaching etc.
You made several good points, thank you for your comment, it gave me a lot to think about.
Alex does charge quite a pretty penny for his coaching, but he can back it up with so many successful students under his belt, I like Alex and have always found him to be very helpful and honest, which is a hard trait to find online. That is why I am always happy to recommend him and his products.
Sally
I’ve doownloaded that Alex Jeffrey’s report and it is great. I was an Easy Profit Auctions student.
I was doing fantastic before the ebay policy change. Alex Jeffrey’s is one of my favorite internet marketer online.
Hi Sally, thanks for the Info, I have over 3000 unopened emails that get destroyed whenever I get the time from more productive work, these numbers go up by around 300 a day, all because I stupidly chose to get the free report and as has been said before this is guaranteed to put me on countless other peoples lists. I have given up opening any that I do not recognise as from people that I want to hear from and that only about 25 people, what a waste of bandwidth and cost if your ups and downs are counted by your ISP. Good on you s
Sally, more power to your keyboard! Kind regards. Leslie
Twitter: RandysIMRambles
says:
Hi Sally,
Yet another excellent blog post!
Personally, I’ve had a few discussions with other marketers about this and I’m always on the losing end…
Unfortunately all these ADswaps DO work.
Which leads to many copying the practise.
BUT – what they all fail to see is that their lists are being worn out quicker and quicker as people get fed up with the constant barrage of the ‘My Friend’s free report’ emails.
On several occasions I’ve actually beaten people on sales of a product, who have lists far in excess of mine.
However – when it comes to JV’s I’m taken less seriously because my list is so much smaller!
It’s a real catch 22!
All that said – I’m like yourself in that I read the freebies first myself and only swap with ones who do actually provide good content!
The downside being that I do one adswap a month as opposed to every other day. – so my list hardly grows by comparison
On the plus side – it is nice having the respect of my readers
Finding the happy medium is the hard part – especially for newbies who are desperately trying to build their lists so that they can start making some regular cash.
And I genuinely believe myself that people like you who provide great content will always prevail in the long term.
You might not have the massive affiliate paydays – but you will continue to make the regular cash that pays the bills!
So for your readers they have to decide which route they would prefer to take…
Not an easy decision when starting out, but there is so much good advice here that I’m sure some will take it and find their own success whilst still adhering to their principles
Cheers for the reminder that I like the way I do things
Randy
http://www.RandolfSmith.com
Twitter: Ladyimp
says:
Hi Sally. I am also a victim of free report overload. As a newbie it was great to start with getting all this free information, but now my inbox is being bombarded daily with more and more free reports. I have got so many stored on my PC that I never get round to reading them or if I do read something that may be of use in the future, I forget where it is and waste hours trying to find it again. I have now started to unsubscribe to most of the lists and have chosen a few who consistently give useful and reliable information to stick with.
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hey Alex, I was an EPA member too, I loved that forum, made many friends from there, and a nice income too, shame on ebay for banning digital downloads how dare they!
Hi Leslie, I too only follow a select few, not as many as 25 mind you, how you get any work done is beyond me.
Hi Randy, I am sure they do work, when done correctly but as you know people jump on the bandwagon without the proper knowledge and abuse the method, doing adswaps with marketers they don’t even know, exposing their list to god only knows what types of promotions from these unknown marketers in the future. I like the way you do things too, at least you provide good content.
Hey Gill, you hit the nail right on the head there, most people don’t download a report and read it there and then, but by the time they get round to reading it (thanks to this new wave of list building freebie marketers) they discover they have actually downloaded another 20 or 30 free reports and need to read them too, hence information overload and people hopping from one method to another whilst never truly finding success with any method, that’s why I always say choose your freebies carefully, don’t just download everything and anything.
Sally
Hi Sally,
I had been kicking around the Internet Marketing arena for far too long without accomplishing my goal. I finally DID find a genuinely honest internet marketer and I unsubscribed from 99% of my other subscription lists. I’m not going to mention that guy here but I’m very grateful to have found him.
Since then I have signed up for a very few people’s email lists. But if they fall into the “my friend has a great free report” type of markerter I unsubscribe fast! I can’t agree with you more Sally, that this is no way to treat your hard earned subscriber list and a good way to lose credibility quickly!
Thanks for your comments. Your emails and blog are among the very few I DO read.
Deanna
Hi Sally, I think you are right. I am sick of being flooded with Freebies from all the marketers at once. Once one gets you email, I feel they must pass it on and then bam you are hit from all sides. What really erks me is the ones promising a free blog site, I won’t mentiion any names, but then you try to log on to your free site and you find out you can’t do anything with it because now they want you to pay 1/2 of what they are asking for it. What a crock. We all know you need some kind of hosting for anything, but that to me is really deceptive and now I’m flooded with Guru’s that got my email from that guy. Please I know things are tough for every one, including me but that is really low down.
Thanks Sally for at least let us vent along with you. Cordially!
We all know FOCUS is key to success in any venture. I had to unsubscribe to about 90% of mailing lists for me to focus on the most important aspect of my online business. Since then i see results.
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Deanna, I am truly glad you found someone who can take you forward, I hope the future brings you great success, thank you for your comment.
Hello Suzanna, I never recommend these such sites, you are always better just to start up your own business rather than use them, your right – there is always a catch tied to them that ultimately means you pay money, use your money wisely, read my SIMS reports and set up your own business, forget those other scams. If you need any help at all, simply email me.
Hiya Alex, yes focus is the key, laser focused is what you need to be, get things done, give yourself deadlines to work too, and everything will soon slot into place.
Sally
Twitter: ronbarrett
says:
Sally,
Good post. I love it!
And I hate it at the same time.
I am guilty of being on both sides of the equation. I started out in the IM biz with the high aspirations (read hopes) of making some money.
You know, all of the promises that all of the ‘gurus’ throw around…only to find that, unless you have a ton of cash to throw at a software developer or something like that, THIS is hard work!
I was also led into the belief that giveaway events were a great way of building your list. Well, they are if you are the one hosting the event and you are collecting all of the email addresses of the people joining.
Don’t get me wrong, if you have a product that is popular, you can build your list through giveaways and you can do it at a steady rate, but it won’t explode the way that you want it to. And you probably won’t be able to monetize it the way that you want to.
Then I was introduced to email swaps and I thought I had found the holy grail. I was ‘working’ with others and sending out promotions to my readers for these other people when I slowly discovered that the people on my list were steadily becoming unresponsive.
Why?
For the exact reasons that you explain above.
It has taken me almost two months of ‘slowing’ down on the swaps to finally be able to do what I originally intended to do: create a relationship with my current readers and give them extremely valuable content.
If that means providing them with a free report that is in line with what they are reading from me currently, great, if not, it gets put into the ‘possibility’ folder for use at a later date.
So, am I sick of free reports? YES!!!
Keep up the great work!
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hi Ron, thank you for your comment.
The majority of people trying to make money online are on wayyyyyy too many mailing lists, it’s a common trait I see all the time.
Giveaway events obviously benefit the event owner, and you’re right, it all depends on the product you giveaway, when I used them I did get a lot of quality sign ups, but to be honest I have not used a giveaway in a very long time, however may consider it in the future.
I have not been converted to ad-swaps and don’t think I ever will be, exposing my list just does not seem worth it, and like you said, it can have terrible after effects when over-used.
I think your right to ditch them, only promote something when YOU want, not because you HAVE to, don’t sell out or use your current subscribers to build a bigger list of new subscribers.
Like you said, just concentrate on pleasing your current list, bigger is not always better and this is especially true with mailing lists.
Sally
Hi Sally
I don’t mind free reports if they provide valuable content without it being full of links all the way through.
Also, don’t you just hate it when you’ve signed up for a free report and then you get sent totally unrelated content, that really does get on my nerves and I tend to hit the unsubscribe button straight away.
Thanks for the free report, off to read it now.
Dawn Kay
I agreee totaly
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hi Dawn,
Yes, people seem to think because a report is given away for free it gives them the right to fill it up to the gills with affiliate links. There is a right way and a wrong way to use links successfully in free reports and that’s 100% the wrong way.
Hey Surveillance,
Thank you for your comment, seems most people agree.
Sally
I take the simple view that if you have to provide your email address to get something, it’s not free.
Your email address has value to whoever is using it to build their mailing list.
Free is when you click on something, and can download it.
Free is NOT being forced to go through a squeeze page, screenfuls of sales pitches, and umpteen “One Time Offers” before you finally can download what was promised.
(I’d provide a link to a totally free useful resource of mine to demonstrate how “Free” should work, but you don’t know me and would probably delete the post if I did
cheers, Eric G.
.-= Eric Graudins´s last blog ..Yellow Pages Advertising – Are you Wasting Your Money? =-.
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hello Eric,
Ha ha, I liked your definition of “FREE” shame most marketers don’t hold the same view.
I think sometimes I do not mind giving away my email address in exchange for a gift of TRUE value, and I fully expect follow up emails after parting with the email.
I just hate to be bombarded with sales pitch after sales pitch!
I would not have deleted the post if you put a link, you would have probably hit a spam trigger though!
So long as people link to valuable information I do not mind one little bit.
Sally
Hi Sally,
There’s a free tool called ‘blog warrior’ rather grandious name for an app I know. But aren’t they all? I can send you a copy if you like. You can search and comment on blogs from it, and it will tell you if it has your link on it. You can get it from warriortool.com or a link on my Blog site. Failing that there is always the MS Excel option 
Thanks for stopping by the Blog, thought I’d return the kindness and have a visit with yours. Have written a post on my blog which covers some of my toughts on what you’ve mentioned. Even though I wrote them before I read your Blog. Great minds think alike eh?
If I can help at all, drop me a line.
Ciao for now
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hello Dave,
Yes they do say great mind thinks alike!
The tool sounds pretty cool, that would be great if you could send me a copy of it to have a play around with.
I love software that saves me time doing anything, time is something I do not have a lot of.
Ciao back at ya, Sally
Twitter: kats59
says:
I couldn’t agree with you more. My inbox is bombarded daily with free reports, software, and more. All have an upsell. I don’t get the kind of emails where they are building rapport with me. Consequently, I get sick of it all ever so often and go in and unsubscribe to all. Takes a little while to do so but is worth it. Otherwise, I delete their emails without opening.
Thanks for another great post. Didn’t know I was the only one with this problem.
Kathy Williams
Twitter: sallyneill
says:
Hey Kathy,
Thanks for yet another great comment
I think email marketing is all about relationships, you know, if you have a great relationship with your subscribers I think your emails get opened.
No trickery required for email subject lines or anything like that, people like you – they trust you – they open the emails – period!
Sally
I still get the odd offer of a free report. Not so much nowadays as I’m turning off a lot of marketer chatter now. There are one or two whose emails I open, but there’s a point where a free video is just watching tv instead of doing the heavy lifting.
Some say that you need to hear as many voices as possible during the planning stage. But once you’re past that you really need to get rid of distractions.
Remember when marketers speak, they have a goal in mind, and that’s to move money from your credit card to their PayPal account.
In fact, the marketers I listen to are very good marketers – and I analyse how they sell to me, not necessarily what they’re telling me. The chances are now that I will have spoken to, or bought something from, a marketer whose list I am on
Alex Jeffeys suggests you set up a personal email address for family and close friends only, and use that one when you’re doing the marketing work to cut down on distractions. I’ve reached the point where I know what is going to be in my inbox most mornings, give it a cursory scan, then have a clear out session once a week.