Girl Talk and why your company should give away something for free

http://www.fuzedmarketing.com/marketing/how-to-improve-your-business-with-a-free-product/

by bennesvig • 15 years ago

12 10 15 years ago

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.

bennesvig• 15 years ago

That is definitely a possibility. The trick is to find the right "free" product to give away. It has to have value, yet also not require a heavy amount of support.

mredbord• 15 years ago

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.

jeffclark• 15 years ago

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

lepton• 15 years ago

"Wedding Day Diamonds gives away pop and cookies."

shawnee_• 15 years ago

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".

marquis• 15 years ago

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).

p0nce• 15 years ago

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.

slackerIII• 15 years ago

"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.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

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.

Girl Talk and why your company should give away something for free

Related Stories