Giving Too Much Free Stuff Can be Bad For Your Business
September 26, 2009 by Russell Hall
Filed under Articles, Newbie Help, internet marketing
I try to keep my subscriptions on other people’s lists to a minimum. For the simple reason that I like to remain as focussed as possible on objectives and tasks, and the thing is that getting inundated with emails that are all clambering for my attention isn’t a good thing.
Presently I have hundreds and hundreds of emails unopened in my inbox even though I had it down to under 10 just a couple of months ago. So although I intended to go through and read many of them I’ll now just be bulk deleting the majority simply because they’re probably no longer relevant.
But the thing I really wanted to talk about is when you get on someone’s list and that person or marketer is really worthwhile and has good content and good supportive material that you would find useful,.. but then they start sending you invitations to get even more free stuff (lots of it in fact is very good,..and surprising that such good bbooks and programsare actually free). The thing that I’m saying is negative is the fact that these freebie offers are coming in every 2 or 3 days (sometimes more) and what I’ve noticed is that many of the offers are enticements for me to sign up to a new list with which the original marketer is affiliated (that’s good for him because he gets the referal commission,.. many of which are ongoing under micro-continuity programs) but it just means that you start to get more and more emails from other marketers that eventually end up being so intense that you just have to opt out of a whole bunch of lists.
Personally,.. I think that any marketer loses credibility and also reduces his or her own effectiveness by spreading themselves too thin over too many programs. Wouldn’t it be better to say focus on two (maximum 3) programs within a particular group that you really believe in and just totally focus on them. Write articels around them, blog about them, tweet about them, comment on them etc etc. That way you don’t end up aggravating people with endless offers with "this is the answer" connotation and thereby eventually lose credibility and just creat confusion (and mistrust?) in the eyes of your subscribers.
I’ll admit that I’ve personally been a bit slack in promoting what I believe are two of the very best programs for internet marketers to get involved with. These particular guys are the real deal when it comes to proving a track record of results that are totally free from all the typical guru hype and BS that abounds on the internet.
I’ll be featuring more about these two marketers shortly,.. but for now I just felt that I should make a point about being barraged by way too much free content. If you’ve got good free content to give to your list,.. then my recommendation is to limit it or drip-feed it to them so that it can be received fairly and given more serious attention too. I think we’re all getting a bit fed up of the "get in quickly" "this closes at midnight" "act before this dissapears",… I for one am just sick of seeing all of that even though it’s true that scarcity does motivate people to act,.. there are better ways of doing it.
Have a great day!
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Russell,
I won’t say much about this except that I completely agree with everything you said in this article. I have unsubscribed from masses of marketers lists (including probably just about all of the “gurus” for this reason.
Loss of credibility, loss of trust, disappointment.
Wayne.
Wayne Cochrane´s last blog ..Beginning! 1.1.10 Hello! Welcome!