

Girl Talk and why your company should give away something for free - bennesvig
http://www.fuzedmarketing.com/marketing/how-to-improve-your-business-with-a-free-product/

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p0nce
The example is misleading. Girl Talk is unable to sell his music beacause
clearing that quantity of samples would be obviously hard. Also he is a great
mashup producer if you are into that genre.

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shawnee_
_4\. By giving away a free valuable product, you create an imbalance in the
relationship between the business and customer. The customer now feels
indebted to you._

Works sometimes. But other times it creates an expectation of "free" that
doesn't always extend to the larger sphere.

First impressions count for a lot, so it's not always easy to decide whether
to give away a mediocre product for free, or to wait until you have something
you think people will pay for.

We're running into this right now at the start-up I work for. It's a bit of a
challenge to convince people that we are justified in the decision to charge
money for this product we previously gave away for "free".

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marquis
Yes, you can't sell something people won't buy anyway. We raised our prices a
year back with a little warning, and almost no complaints, on a product that
we felt was worth more to the customer than they were initially paying. It was
a really good decision as it's not only increased our bottom line but led to
less customers paying little and expecting a lot (and much less support to
deal with).

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JonnieCache
He did not give his product away for free. He charges decent money (probably
hundreds of dollars an hour) for the shows I imagine, judging from the picture
it looks like he puts in quite a performance.

The free music files are just marketing to get people to come to the shows.
They are adverts. Of course they are free.

This is the way the entire music industry has run for years now. The part of
it that matters anyway.

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forwardslash
I think that the idea of giving away something for free as a business plan
will only work in music and other verticals which do not require you to
provide support for the something. This has been a key point in the recent
articles on the pitfalls of Freemium.

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mredbord
Disagree for the most part. There's always _something_ that can be given away
for free: blog posts, free trials that lack support and require a paid upgrade
for it (e.g. Magento), ebooks, contest giveaways, etc. If you can't give
something away for free as part of your marketing, you're probably not
thinking creatively enough.

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slackerIII
"How did he do it? By giving away his work for FREE"

That has less to do with it than the fact he is really, really good at what he
does.

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jeffclark
Great article and all, but why has he tagged it "Wedding Day Diamonds" at the
bottom?

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lepton
"Wedding Day Diamonds gives away pop and cookies."

