How often have you seen something offered for free only to find you have to pay to get it?
A favorite trick of the so-called “gurus” who peddle free stuff to get you to part with your cash is to make you buy something else or join a subscription site or club in order to get the “free stuff”.
As often as not the “free stuff” is old material that has been re-hashed with a new exciting heading to entice you to sign up for it.
Another trick to get your money is to offer you something valuable for $1 which also gives you a free one month membership to an exclusive website or club. In the small print you will see you’re going to be automatically charged $29.97 per month after the first free month until you cancel.
Both of these will include “absolutely no risk” statements saying if you cancel within a certain time you will be refunded in full with no questions asked. They are banking on you not cancelling, or forgetting to cancel until they’ve got your money for at least a few months.
After you given up your name and email address, or clicked on a link if it’s in an email to you, you’re presented with a detailed description of the free product, (this is really the sales letter).
The first thing to do now is scroll down to the bottom to look for an “Add to Cart” button or something similar, or pictures of credit cards and a Paypal button because these will take you to the Order Form. And until you’ve placed your order you won’t be able to get the “free stuff” you were looking for.
As marketers now realise this is what savvy visitors do, the “Add to Cart” button and Credit Card Images are often displayed in the middle of the text, usually near Special Bonus offers, to encourage you to read all the sales letter. You’ll then find the “Add to Cart” box again at bottom.
Finding these buttons or images is the quick and easy way to spot you’re being sold to. After all you were just looking for some “free stuff”.
Many of these free offers are not made by the originator of the product, but by Affiliates. You can spot them by seeing the same offer being made many, many times but usually with a different subject or heading. Now there’s nothing at all wrong with this.
Affiliate Marketing is a perfectly legal and effective way of making money, but at the end of the day, you just wanted the “free stuff.”
So where can you find genuine “free stuff” without even having to give your name and email and certainly not having to pay for anything.
We have found one of the best places to start, for a completely FREE BOOK full of excellent marketing ideas, is right here.
Let me know what you think.
Cliff Chapman
traveljunkies – worldwide adventure travel & activities directory & search engine, like Google only smaller.
www.traveljunkies.com
PS . . . Click here to get your free marketing book … no sign up needed
While many people view travel as a fun hobby or interest, it can actually help gain experience and improve skills that are of interest to employers. While you shouldn’t put travel under work experience unless you had an internship or job abroad, you can create a separate section to discuss your international skills, include anecdotes in your cover letter, or give examples during the interview to give yourself a boost over the competition.
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