To be “Free” or “Not to be Free”…ya, that IS the burning question!

Ok. Lots of screaming headlines and sites out there: “FREE!” Join this free, that free, this gives your free stuff, that free this and something else free whatever. Except, when you join (free), hello! You find out that is isn’t. I joined one tonight that just stepped on my last poor frazzled nerve, hence this post.

My pet peeves:
“Free information!”…then they send you a bunch of sales literature. Like, yeah, that is supposed to be free. This goes for so-called e-books which are nothing more than e-book-a-sized sales brochures.

“Free to join!”… then you find out you have to pay something to get any real value from the site! That is NOT free thank you anyway.

“Free Advertising”…only to discover you have to invest a jillion hours or your entire lifetime performing tasks at their site to get any of that free advertising. Time is money you know. (Most of them then offer paid packages…lol, now, this is NOT free.) This is what I joined tonight. Loads of promises that looked really good only to find I will have to devote my entire waking existence to working this site to actually benefit from it! (Unless someone figures out how to do this while sleeping…really and truly.)

“Free Trial Offer”…only to discover that the time period is ridiculously short like 3 days, 7 days and etc. IT TAKES A MINIMUM OF 30 DAYS TO SEE RESULTS in any kind of promotional campaign. Trust me in this one. I have had my first site http://www.xtreamsurf.com/ online and aggressively marketing it since 7/04. I am really just now seeing the fruits of all that campaigning. People are just know saying “XtreamSurf? Yeah, I heard of that.” (or me, Cherie Halliday…lol.) One of my favorite sites that truly offers a free 30-day trial is at FastAds Submitter:
http://www.fastadsubmitter.com/g.php?r=10 . You get 30 days to try it out. You like, you keep. Not, leave. Doesn’t get any simpler than that.

You get my drift. There is “free” and then there is really free. If something toted as being free ends up requiring you either spend loads of your time to achieve or pay money to get, it is not free.

Why do sites even bother offering free anyway? Simple: to get you to join and try the product. You try, you like, it works, you then want more, you buy. Cool. I am with that all the way. I do exactly the same thing on my free traffic sites! People join free, get lots of credits to run their sites to try it out. They like they stay, maybe purchase something (this helps pay all the “stay-in-business” bills for sure), everyone gets something from the initial “free” offer.

So, there is “free” and then there is actually free. How do you tell the difference? This is fairly common sense thinking. A site which makes you spend an inordinate amount of time performing tasks to build up credits is not free. A site which gives you upfront credits to advertise is free. A site which once you join “free” then requires a payment to benefit from the program: not free. A site that is “free” and delivers the initial goods free, is.

Bottom line: look, read, analyze. Ask yourself: “Does this site deliver?” Depending on the answer you stay or flee. (also called “voting with your feet.”)
By: Cherie Halliday
http://www.xtreamsurf.com/