
I am done with the freemium business model - jfoucher
http://www.tylernichols.com/web-development/i-am-done-with-the-freemium-business-model
======
freejack
Employing a Freemium model without having a strong path to the "mium" part
(i.e. converting free users to paid users) is a weak model. In this case, it
didn't even sound like a real freemium model anyways - a free version and a
paid version of the same one-time purchase is a pretty weak place to start
with freemium. Better would have been to giveaway the first purchase and then
aggressively upsell on an annual subscription offering that included
variations for all holidays or something similar.

By offering a free one-time purchase and positioning it against a paid one-
time purchase you are making it too easy for people to choose free. Especially
when they have to figure out if the higher res and other extras are worth the
extra $$. Free is always a no brainer. In this case, it sounds a bit like the
OP was giving away the razor and the blades in the freemium version, and
better blades in the paid version.

With a little bit more thinking and tinkering, I bet the author could get
freemium working to his advantage.

------
pg
Here's the mistake:

"I have come to the realization that most people who want something for free
will never, ever think of paying you, no matter how valuable they find your
service."

This is true, but irrelevant. What matters is the total number of people
paying you, not what percentage of your users that fraction represents.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=dropbox+revenues>

~~~
drieddust
Why should a business add burden of supporting additional users unless free
users bring something to table in some tangible form like free press?

I am really curious.

~~~
pg
It's essentially a marketing expense.

~~~
blantonl
I _do_ agree with this. Especially in this case if you outsource some of your
marketing "expenses" to social platforms ("Like buttons", "tweet this", etc)

------
dasil003
A Santa letter service strikes me as exactly the kind of thing that people
will love when free, but not see the value proposition if they have to pay.
Plus they're gonna use it just once.

Combine those factors and yeah I think you're better off just trying to get
people to pay up front rather than trying to subsidize millions of free users
with the handful that will pay.

On the other hand, many other types of services need to be demonstrated and
repeated use will add progressive value that tips the scales to paid
conversions that never would have signed up off the bat.

Yeah freemium is often a pain in the ass, but it's popular for a reason.

PS. As far as emails are concerned, people _will_ flag any opt-out scheme,
they will most definitely _not_ read your copy, and getting angry about it
does nothing but raise your blood pressure. The solution is to use a paid
service like SendGrid, manage your reputation, and go opt-in if you're still
having problems.

~~~
phillmv
Yeah, I found the following quote,

>Many free customers flagged the email as spam! So let me get this straight,
you just used my service to make something for your kid for free and then you
nail me with a spam complaint?

To be astonishingly tone deaf. Way to not understand how people are using your
service.

------
Shenglong
You can't just _use_ a freemium model and expect it to work; there are a lot
of considerations. Paying users will see your product almost as an investment,
regardless of the amount they actually pay - that's why these people are so
much easier to deal with. They feel like they have a stake in your product.
The problem is, in order to find these people, you need to let everyone (for
freemium) test it.

 _Free customers are higher maintenance than paying customers._

They can be at times. Yet, if what you're describing is true, then it's
probably your own fault. Do you really expect people to click a FAQ link when
it's so much easier just to hit reply? Do YOU even read FAQ links other
companies send you? I consider myself decently competent, and sometimes I
tremble at the thought of plowing through an unorganized FAQ page. A better
solution? Have the contact form auto-suggest answers with a double submit,
filtering by keywords in their help request. "Does this answer your question?
..."

 _Many free customers flagged the email as spam!_

I'm sorry. If you sent me one of these for a seasonal product, I'd probably
mark it as spam as well, if I couldn't find an unsubscribe link. Did you have
a link in there? Was it easy to find? Did I need to log in just to
unsubscribe? Did you think that just because it's a seasonal "thank you", that
you wouldn't need an unsubscribe link? I used to get like 20 "thank you"
emails or "happy holiday"/"happy birthday" emails every couple of months, and
it's dead annoying. When I couldn't find an unsubscribe link, or it was too
difficult to unsubscribe, I just marked it as spam. I feel bad doing it, but
it solves my problem.

Honestly, you can get people to agree to just about anything. My last legal
disclaimer said something to the effect of "if you press accept, we own your
soul." Do I really own the souls (pending existence) of tens of thousands of
people? No. Just because people agree to an elongated privacy statement,
doesn't mean it's okay for you to take advantage of what they agreed to (->
south park Human Centipad).

So, how do you make a freemium model work? Segment your free users from your
paying users. You NEED to interact with both differently. There's a lot of
money to be made in freemium, but you can't approach it so recklessly.

~~~
darklajid
"I have an opt-out link on that policy page, and I included one in the email I
sent right at the top, at the bottom and in the body of the email."

I count four at that point, 3 being in the mail. While I'm with you on the
first part of your response and like the final paragraph, the comment on
unsubscribing was the result of bad skimming and is - unnecessary.

~~~
Shenglong
I was just trying to evoke some thought. If people are opting to flag spam,
rather than opt out, then _something_ is wrong. Sometimes there's a disconnect
between what makes sense to us, and what makes sense to our market.

~~~
tjoff
Something is wrong if you have to opt out of something you never asked for.

Just as those dreadful browser toolbars you get with a _lot_ of installation
packages (even java updates, how pathetic). If I have to actively uncheck that
box you are an ass.

There should be a way to punish such behavior, marking mail as spam seems to
have some effect.

------
trotsky
I clicked through your site. There were zero hints anywhere that you were
looking to sell anything at all until I had gone through four or five pages to
create the card with including the page of questions I had to answer that left
little doubt about your future plans. By the time I hit the pay option I felt
ambushed, and worse you had spent zero time marketing to me while I was on
your own site!

You are 100% right about free customers being much much worse to deal with, I
don't envy you there at all. But they don't owe you anything either. With a
free tier or trial you're buying an opportunity to market to people and
convert them into paying customers, that's all. If you didn't manage to
convert that's on you not them, though to be fair it is a very difficult job
unless you have a good product.

You got some good experience and learned some things that are quite valuable.
People will print out free letters but nobody will buy. Traffic like that at
Christmas can absolutely make you some real money - I'd suggest trying again
next year with some good quality holiday merchandise and amazon's toy
affiliate program. Pretty much every visitor there will be buying toys that
month, they are thinking about it right and done right quite a few will
consider it helpful.

------
yangez
If you collect emails with an opt-out method you shouldn't complain when some
people flag you for spam.

Paying customers didn't unsubscribe because they obviously had a higher level
of engagement with the service. Of course free users won't keep track of every
service they've signed up for, ESPECIALLY if they didn't explicitly say they
wanted to be emailed.

I'm not a fan of freemium either, but this is more of a knee-jerk reaction to
a perceived insult than any real insight into the business model.

~~~
ColdAsIce
The insight is, offering something for free isn't worth it. And why? Because
free users cost more money than paying users when considering the headaches
and work they cause.

~~~
icebraining
Well, of course free users cost more money than paying users: they aren't
paying! The question is: how many conversions of free to paid users did he
get? Because it may still be better to have a business with lots of annoying
free users than with no users at all.

~~~
georgieporgie
_Well, of course free users cost more money than paying users: they aren't
paying!_

You're twisting his words. While it's obvious that free users will inherently
incur a net cost, it's not obvious that the actual per-user cost of a free
user is higher than that of a paying user. The latter is still a very
interesting observation.

------
blantonl
I run and manage a very large freemium service, and I will tell you that the
percentage of users that convert is a _highly watched_ metric that is very
important to my business.

I agree with the fact that there will always be consumers out there that will
never ever convert, and that is accepted. But I'm always doing A/B tests and
feature adds that makes sure that the fraction that does convert tries to
increase.

With that in mind, I'll share with you some other lessons learned running a
freemium model for many years:

1) free users generate enormous traction for your business through social
platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

2) free users today really view the Web with suspicion and will often,
instantly accuse you of a bait-and-switch or scam without ever taking the time
to read what has been presented to them.

3) the instant you even gently nudge an "upgrade" path, many customers
instantly believe that they cannot use the service AT ALL unless they pay for
something. In our case, the vast majority of our services are completely free,
yet folks will instantly cancel their accounts when they even learn that we
have a "premium subscription."

4) customers will times see a premium upgrade landing page and click through
and purchase the most expensive subscription, as fast as they can, and then
come back and argue it wasn't what they wanted.

I have a zillion other stories to tell.

------
DanBC
> _What really made me change my mind about offering freemium was when I sent
> a thank you email a couple of days ago to everyone who used the site this
> Christmas. Many free customers flagged the email as spam! So let me get this
> straight, you just used my service to make something for your kid for free
> and then you nail me with a spam complaint?. When creating the letter, I
> have people agree to my privacy policy before they finish. It says I may
> contact them from time to time letting them know when our other site’s open
> for the holiday season. Basically, letting them know when they can get some
> more free stuff from me. I have an opt-out link on that policy page, and I
> included one in the email I sent right at the top, at the bottom and in the
> body of the email. No paying customers flagged the email as spam or even
> unsubscribed. Only the “Free” people were kind enough mark it as spam. This
> of course raises holy hell with my email provider which in turn causes me
> headaches._

I have no idea how you manage your email lists, but this is something that you
have no excuse to be ignorant about. Confirmed opt-in vs opt-out has been
known for many years.

It's not clear from the blog post whether there was any protection against
bots and malware signing people up for a letter from santa.

It's not clear whether you asked people to confirm that they actually wanted
to be be signed up, and let them know that they'd be getting further email
from you.

And it's not clear what the content[1] of the "Thank you" email was. I can
imagine a lot of people flagging it if it's trying to push something.

[1] I know it's not about content but about consent, but many more people flag
emails selling stuff than simple thanks email.

~~~
gexla
Right, if you are going to be sending email out for notifications of future
products then you should probably set that up as a separate option and make it
double opt-in. That's what most services do. In other words, they have the
sign-up and then there is a checkbox or something similar which says something
to the effect of "notify me of future blah blah blah." If you don't check that
box then your email is typically only used for things like resetting your
password.

------
mechanical_fish
Such a warm and friendly invitation to debate:

 _This post made it to the first page on Hacker News. Some of the comments
have been great and informative. Some comments on HN and here on my blog have
been down right idiotic. Some people have made false assumptions and some I am
convinced didn’t even read what I wrote. Either way, I appreciate all the
people who took their time to comment on the post._

I wish I had time to read any farther, but I've suddenly remembered a vitally
important prior engagement.

------
hsshah
Freemium is certainly not applicable for all products and services.

Phil Libin (CEO, Evernote) has a good framework to think about this. Simply
put, if the value of your product to your customer increases over time and
usage, freemium could be a good way to acquire customers [ofcourse, this works
when incremental cost per customer is very small]. On the contrary, if the
value remains constant or decreases, you are better off with charging right
away or subscription model.

Phil has talked about this multiple times. I can't share the video of the FI
session that I had attended; but I found a similar talk here. Warning: It is
~25 mins long. <http://vimeo.com/11932184>

------
Terretta
> _So I am off to refactor my web app and take out the free journey..._

Then there will be nothing left. The site is even a .org intended to scream
"free".

I can't find any evidence of a pay model except in the last FAQ question about
deluxe letters and PayPal. Nothing on the home page, samples, or as far as
Step 4 where I'm entering the child's information suggests anything other than
that the service is free.

This isn't how "freemium" is supposed to be done. Well done freemium is up
front about costs and the value proposition of paying, while offering a free
path to sample the service, _get users invested_ , and drive viral growth. The
Santa letter doesn't result in investment as it's one time use.

This copy and site flow is a bait and switch or come on tactic that calls into
question just how righteous the rest of your indignation might be.

------
jroseattle
The freemium model certainly has appropriate application to be successful,
where success yields customers satisfied enough that they're willing to pay
you for a higher level of service. Finding that mix for one's service is the
secret sauce. That said, freemium is not always the best route.

I don't find this guy's experience as an indictment of that model, however.
And certainly equating spam complaints from follow-on emails isn't an issue
with the freemium model, unless you believe the value of your service is
enhanced by unsolicited email.

But hey, this guy got something valuable out of this, but not in how he's
stated it. He blames the users, but I blame email. Take email out of the
equation, and I bet his subscriber take rate increases.

------
jasondrowley
First off, I kind of feel bad for Tyler. I've had a similar experience with a
web app I designed, and it sucked.

Second, I'm inclined to believe he (and I) ran into trouble because our apps
were one-time-use or occasional-use tools. The freemium model isn't totally
useless—it just doesn't translate well to one-time-use services/tools.

------
ticks
Hate to say it, but the santa image isn't very nice, almost sinister:

<http://www.letterfromsanta.org/santa-letter-example.php>

Perhaps some more cheerful designs for paid customers would have helped.

~~~
sequoia
And I'm picking nits now, but the door hanging copy: "Please hang on your
bedroom door so I know which room is yours when I visit on Christmas Eve!" -
Santa [Giant Scary Bearded Man]

The stockings are hung by the chimney... why exactly do you need to know where
I sleep? :p

~~~
notatoad
in some some cultures children hang stockings on their bedposts.

------
msh
Umm, you bury your intent to send emails in your privacy policy, how is that
not morally spam?

------
andrewljohnson
This almost seems like a parody. First of all, it starts with "I was glad to
help the children" and concludes with "but I'm shutting it down because they
were jerks."

And, personally, I would just assume people would mark my "thank you" follow-
up as spam in high numbers. I would further be shocked if a high percentage of
my Santa Claus users either read the Help or signed up for paid services.

Is he kidding?

------
adaml_623
The thing you didn't consider with your post xmas mail shot is that when you
send someone an email there is a cost associated with that. When people agree
to taking something for free then they don't expect an email later. It is a
desperate problem with the freemium model almost as though you need to tell
people that the price of this free gimmick is an email that's going to arrive
in your mailbox.

------
jrockway
_So let me get this straight, you just used my service to make something for
your kid for free and then you nail me with a spam complaint?_

Well, if you didn't get the user's explicit consent to be emailed, yup, that's
what happens. SPAM is "unsolicited bulk email", so if you sent bulk mail to
people that didn't want it, you're a spammer. Nobody cares so much about your
service as to want to read an email about it -- people just don't like getting
advertising in their email, and very few people would ever consent to be
emailed explicitly. (They may leave a checkbox checked, but that's not
consent, that's a slight-of-hand.)

Anyway, hopefully you learned that just because you can do something, doesn't
mean you shouldn't. People that won't pay won't pay. And they don't want to
read ads either.

------
rickmb
So the guy misleads his users by offering a free service and then spamming his
users, and then proceeds to blame the freemium model for the consequences of
his own inappropriate (and in many countries illegal) actions?

Am I supposed to take this seriously?

------
droithomme
"Free customers are higher maintenance than paying customers. I think it’s
because they aren’t paying, they show little or no attention to directions."

This is true in my experience. We've experimented with limited support for
people contacting support with pirated licenses. They take up more time, don't
read manuals or use help, and ask dumber questions that would be answered by
just a few minutes poking around. They are also more belligerent and much more
likely to post negative reviews on discussion boards than paying customers.

Not complaining, just observing. It is what it is.

------
Pedrom
>"Free customers are higher maintenance than paying customers."

I would like to share my small experience with the freemium model. I have with
a friend an online dominoes game where people can play for free but they have
to be invited to play. Premium players are the ones who can create new games
so in order to play free you need a premium user to start the game.

In my experience, all the author says is completely true. The free users
require somehow more maintenance and they are by much the ones that complain
more. However, in our case they are the ones that build the site. Without
them, the site would be really desolate and premium users would be complaining
about the lack of people to play. It would be indeed cheaper to maintain but I
am completely sure that the income would be 80% lower.

I don't know if this experience would be helpful for the community here but I
thought it would be interesting to share our case where free users are indeed
troublesome but completely necessary.

------
robbrown451
I'm not happy either with the fact that it is hard to make money on the
internet when so much stuff is free, but I can guarantee you going "pay only"
is going to have one effect: it will kill your site for good. No one knows how
good your service is till they try it, and you are competing with a zillion
other free services.

------
richardburton
_Free customers are higher maintenance than paying customers ... when I sent a
thank you email a couple of days ago to everyone who used the site this
Christmas. Many free customers flagged the email as spam!_

That is hilarious. I use LOL sparingly but: LOL

~~~
tszming
I don't understand why people down voted you, anyway, how do you know your
customers have 'flagged the email as spam!' ?

~~~
marquis
Mailchimp for example, provides this information. It's one reason why
Mailchimp and SendGrid et al are so useful. It pays for itself when we send
out a newsletter to thousands of emails.

~~~
ams6110
Still doesn't answer the question. How does mailchimp know? Do MUAs commonly
send some kind of response to the sender when the user flags a message as
spam? Or is this something they're getting via webmail services?

~~~
marquis
That's a good question I couldn't find the answer for. What I can tell you is
what happens as a MailChimp user: if I send out an email and someone clicks
the 'this is SPAM' button in their mail client, MailChimp notifies me that
this happened so I guess that the email client somehow notifies the sending
mail server using the List-Unsubscribe header.

~~~
gizzlon
I bet this only work for aol.com and a few others.. I highly doubt that
Thunderbird & friends notify the sender. Of course It _could_ be some sort of
hack, like the image thing.

------
anthonycerra
What intrigues me most about your article is that it begs another question.
How much testing is enough? Based on your account of the situation I don't
think you tested enough variables. Were the premium features just something
you threw up as an attempt to monetize the site or did you really think
through the needs of someone who is willing to pay you?

Stepping through your site there are lots of suggestions I would make (which
are beyond the scope of this comment), but at what point can one say he's done
enough testing to say "I'm done with freemium". That's the question I'm
interested in.

------
pavelkaroukin
He should be done with freemium business model for this one particular
business instead. It just do not fit it.

May be try to send e-cards for free and offer to send similar physical card
for a fee?

------
Kodix
Well, that's a perfectly reasonable conclusion to make, in this case. However,
his business just seems to be the wrong one to use this model on. For one,
there is no added value for paying customers from the free customers being
there. For another thing, the rewards for buying into his product just seem..
meager. I know that _I_ wouldn't want to buy any of them.

Though, his comments about the psychology of free users? Spot on, in my
opinion.

------
impendia
I think the average user doesn't know what it means to flag something as spam.
Indeed, I didn't before I read this post.

To the average user, I would guess that flagging as spam means "Don't show me
any more e-mails from this address." I think few would guess that it would
have any negative repercussions for the sender, or indeed that the sender
would ever find out about it.

~~~
kansface
I flag anything as spam which meets one of the following criterion:

1\. unrequested

2\. no email opt out (looking at you AppSumo) and not accepting mailinator

3\. requires more than clicking an unsub link and perhaps an extra button on
the loading page. I will not enable JS to do so.

I have marked several mailing lists, like Postgresqls, as spam. I tried to
unsubscribe from that particular one for 10 minutes then gave up.

If you are sending emails that people don't want, even if they asked for them
in the first place, you may as well be spam. I hope my actions eventually lead
to admins being more selective with emailing.

------
mooki
Freemium is the dominant model among online games for a reason. Dropbox is
another example. Anything addictive that has the potential of hooking a
customer long term. Noone is going to shelve out until they've put x amount of
hours into it.

Christmas cards is the worst product imaginable. It's a one-off thing with no
addictive potential and lots of free alternatives.

------
stretchwithme
A product or service that saves you time or hassle has value.

If you understand that and value your time, you'll pay for services that
actually deliver value.

If you don't, you'll spend hours trying to save pennies.

So if you've effectively communicated the value of paying for the better
service, your paying customers are naturally smarter to begin with and require
less help.

------
Cl4rity
Essentially, it was hardly ever a business model, unless you consider not
making any money at all an actual business.

------
MatthewPhillips
I disagree that your service was free. It sounds like the cost to users is
receiving unwanted emails about other "freemium" sites you run.

This is one reason I prefer paying. If I'm paying I feel reasonably convinced
I won't be annoyed in the future. But if I'm paying and still receive unwanted
emails? Loss of a customer.

------
ad80
Can't fully test the free vs. paid as "we are closed for the 2011....", but I
am not sure how uncomfortable was it to go free option versus paid (eg. big
site logo on the free printout). Maybe the free option should be slightly more
painful to make users consider paying?

------
justinhj
This is something with universal appeal, so if you could go for high traffic
and allow the user to browse and add products from partner sites you could
make money from sponsorship deals and advertising.

although i can see a danger of making it too commercial looking and putting
folk off

------
FreshCode
You're not solving a real problem.

~~~
blantonl
You know, this assertion cannot be decided by one individual person, such as
yourself.

The fact that he attracted customers to his platform (paying or not), that
aggressively used his service means he solved a problem.

The issue was his ability to generate revenue from his product.

~~~
FreshCode
My point is that Letters From Santa is a vitamin, not a painkiller or a cure.
I think this type of business actually lends itself well to a freemium model,
if the paid version is worthwhile. That being said, you stepped into a
massively over-saturated gift card market.

------
surfingdino
You are getting a lot of good advice here. I'd use it. The advice that is. As
for the site, you know what worked, what hasn't and there's plenty of other
holidays you can try to monetize. Letters to the Easter Bunny, perhaps?

------
swah
If folks could pay 0,50 with a click for this, I think many would.

------
dustingetz
TLDR: author doesn't understand freemium and gets mad when he doesn't make any
money. Author spams clients and gets mad when clients flag his spam.

freemium can be brilliant. take github, search HN, it has been discussed at
length.

------
ExpiredLink
'Freemium' is an inherently dishonest business model. That's why it doesn't
work. Most people see through it.

------
crawfordcomeaux
I'm going to use absolute terms below, ie. never or always. I realize that
there are edge cases, but I'm not going to bother addressing those. They will
always exist & they can be wildly different from business to business. I'm
going to sound cranky cause I wrote this right after I woke up this morning.
You've been warned.

I think your premise is flawed & would go so far as to say there are aspects
about your business that you don't fully grasp.

1\. You don't understand the freemium model. With freemium services that
succeed, the free option offers features that cover a majority of users, but
are still limited based on cost to the provider. The paid tiers are priced to
cover costs of providing increased limits & additional features, while staying
under or matching customers' expectations of price. I'm not saying all
freemium services work this way, but tons do. And I'm not saying you don't
know they don't work that way, but I don't think you understand how it applies
to your business. Which brings me to the next point...

2\. Paid features must provide true value. Not artificial value that's
generated by offering low-res versions of your product for free & high-res if
I pay, but features that actually increase the worth of your service to me. My
kid isn't going to care if he gets a low-res letter, so why should I pay for a
high-res one? With payment, you have to provide meaningful value. Your site
idea of value is giving me a letter template on a single background with 3
color choices, along with a door hanger & an envelope. This is 2011 and if you
want me to pay for that, you'd better provide me with some fancier premium
backgrounds & a color-picker. Oh...and there are different printing/packaging
options. And you're mailing it to whoever I want it sent to with a return
address located at the North Pole. And the folded letter or envelope has
Santa's fancy wax seal on it. And it smells like an elven woodshop. Now THAT
letter from Santa? Yeah...I'd buy that...and I'd buy 10 more for all the other
kids in my extended family. And I'd tell everyone I knew that had kids in
their lives about it, as well as share it on every social network I'm on.
Cause THAT letter from Santa kicks ass!

You know what...I had more to comment on, but screw that. I'm going to go
build my own Santa letter generator right now that does all that and more. And
I'm going to start taking order in the next two weeks.

Actually, no...I need to finish coding my freemium startup's prototype. But
expect good competition next year, cause I just told everyone how to beat your
current offering.

3\. Know your customers. You say you had a good design. I'd say it's just ok.
It's about on par with sites made 5-10 years ago. To be honest, I'm not used
to using sites that require multiple page loads to customize stuff & that
don't provide a live preview of my changes. Also, I'd take a look at how much
time your users spend on your landing page, cause I'm betting a lot of that
text that's mucking up the space around your big red button isn't being read.
Take a look at services that have launched in the past year for guidance on
how to improve your design. Oh...and get a designer to handle the
improvements.

4\. Customers will mark your email as spam. Period. If you want to minimize
that, make sure the people that will label you a spammer never get a single
piece of email from you besides a receipt. One way to do it is to put
subscription links in good spots, but keep them out of the standard purchase
flow. Foolproof? No. Better than winding up on blacklists? Totally. Your email
list won't grow as quickly as opting people in through a privacy policy (which
is just...ugh..."here's my privacy policy you have to agree to, wherein I tell
you how I'll intrude on your privacy"...really?!), but this ain't about you.
This is about your customers who are complaining either by communicating
directly with you or by pressing that "Spam" button. Providing customer
service means you do what you can to make your customers happy & satisfied
with as minimal negative emotional periods as possible. Not having to worry
about customer service means you don't give them an opportunity to get upset
cause they're already completely taken care of.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
FYI: I wrote that for the guy's blog, but didn't try posting it til comments
were closed.

------
paulhauggis
He provided an opt-out link, he didn't use an open relay and it wasn't
misleading the customer in any way.

He didn't violate any US laws. Interestingly enough, it also exempts
"transactional or relationship messages" and only applies to email that is
promoting a commercial product/service. At the time of the email, he had
nothing for sale on his site.

You can see more about this law here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-
SPAM_Act_of_2003>

The problem is that most of the time, the people that want something for free
have already signed up for a million other free things and are overly-
sensitive about spam.

------
dootsman
HAKEN!

