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I’ve noticed marketers who are moving the free line all the way to, ‘never.’

They no longer give away anything for free, and might even go so far as to actively discourage freebie seekers.

While I understand the sentiment behind this, I’m not sure I agree. True, it can get discouraging if it seems like your lists are only interested in what they can get for free.

You work hard to create your products – why in the world would you give away your best stuff?

The answer is, you wouldn’t, of course. Not unless it leads to a bigger upsell of some kind.

But removing all the freebies from your funnels is, in my opinion, a big mistake.

Take a look at the marketers you follow – aren’t these the same ones you purchase products from, with or without a fancy sales letter?

So why do you follow these people and buy their recommendations? Odds are it’s because you discovered them through a free offer of some sort, like the kind you get in exchange for your email address.

You read their free report or watched their video or listened to their podcast, and you found out you like and trust them. You wanted to see what else they offer, and so you opened their emails, read their blogposts, and started buying their products.

Frankly, I think your freebies are your best sales letters. They tell your future customers what to expect from you and give them a reason to keep coming back for more, whether it’s free or paid.

Take a cold customer who doesn’t know me, give them my very best sales letter, and it’s really questionable whether they will buy or not.

But give me a customer who has read my free reports and come back, and I’ll show you a sale – with or without the fancy sales letter.

Furthermore, because I do offer free products first as a way of introducing myself and my business, and offer paid products afterwards, my retention rates are higher and my refund rates are lower.

In my opinion, the freebies we offer our prospects can be our very best selling tools.

Can you earn $5,000 to $10,00 a month giving away what other marketers sell?

Actually, yes! I love this because it’s simple and will work in a variety of niches.

There’s this gal in the investment market who gives away her course. Mind you, it’s a great course, complete with videos, pdf’s, and a ton of actionable information.

People would pay good money for the course, but she advertises it everywhere for free.

She uses very professional looking ads, banners and landing pages to give away this free system.

All people need to do is hand over their name, email address and physical mailing address.

I suspect she sells her customers’ info to mail order businesses as well, but that’s not where she’s making the money mentioned above.

And of course she’s building her mailing list so she can promote other products, as well.

But again, that’s not where she’s making the money mentioned above.

In order to start investing, people need a trading account. And the trading account she recommends in the course pays her a commission for every person who signs-up… a fairly hefty commission, at that.

This business model could be expanded to many other niches as well. Simply find something that people need – preferably something they pay for on a monthly basis – and then create a product that leads them straight into buying that product or service, and give the product away for free.

No real selling is involved, and you can make not one, but multiple different income streams simultaneously.

I’ve seen this time and again.

Someone builds a nice little site, or product, or some sort of residual income stream.

Then they spend their time tweaking it and trying to increase the income from it. They’re good at SEO and so they tweak and tweak and tweak to make the most money possible from that asset.

Good so far, right?

But there comes a point of diminishing returns. The site or product or whatever is making $1,000 a month.

And after hours and days and weeks of tweaking, the site is now making $1,100.

But here come the monthly bills (mortgage, car, insurance, etc.) and the bills are far more than $1,100. So, what’s a marketer to do?

Sell the asset, of course. You might get $3,000 to $5,000 for this asset, depending on what it is and so forth.

Now they have the bills paid and maybe go on a bit of a spending spree, but no asset and no residual monthly income.

Of course now they have to do it all again – build an asset, tweak it and wind up having to sell it to pay bills.

Did you spot the mistake? It’s hard to miss.

If the marketer had spent just enough time testing and tweaking…

…And then moved on and REPLICATED the process…

S/he would then have TWO assets each creating $1,000 a month in residual income.

Then rinse and repeat. Building one asset a month, that’s $6,000 a month in residual income after six months, along with assets totaling maybe $18,000 or a lot more.

As you’ve already guessed, the point is that while you do want to test and tweak whatever it is that you’re doing online, you don’t want to make a career out of it.

Optimize it the best you can as quickly as you can, and then replicate the process and build another one, and another one, and another one…

In the above example, our marketer could have started selling one asset (product, site, etc.) per month after six months or a year, to again greatly increase their monthly income.

Selling these assets before their life cycle ends can be a great idea. After all, it’s hard to sell a product or site once it’s no longer making money.

Do what you need to do, but don’t make a career out of making a few extra dollars while leaving loads of money on the table.