Freebies: do they work?

One of the ways many businesses create “buzz” and try to get new customers is by doing giveaways or “freebies.”

On the one hand, freebies can introduce your work through word of mouth buzz, thereby introducing it to many people who may never have heard of you before or seen your work. On the other hand, people tend to devalue what they can get for free, (it’s not just men who are guilty of that, it’s a human trait) and they may never have been your customer anyway. So is it in your best interest to give away freebies? You decide.

Let me tell you a story.

My web design site was a freebie site for years. Online since 1999, my website was a banquet for those seeking freebie graphics for their own websites or web projects. I gave away free desktop wallpaper, free web ornaments and jewels, free banners, free linkware web set templates, free BladePro presets. I had a few CDROM’s which I sold online, as well, like my screensavers and special high resolution graphics, better web templates and desktop wallpaper. Needless to say, after I had developed a following, my traffic went through the roof. My server used to crash every other day. I sold some screensavers, but not very many. I sold some high resolution art discs, but not very many. I was content that so many people loved my work that they were downloading in huge numbers, sucking up bandwidth like hungry vampires. The emails poured in like barrels of honey: thank you so much for this wonderful free art! My desktop is now beautiful! I love my new web set! I told all my friends about you! And so on.

Even though the terms were clearly stated—for personal, non-commercial use only, and I begged people not to hotlink–my requests were blatantly ignored, more often than not. I had to password the directories to stop the hotlinking, and chasing down the terms violators was a tiring, depressing business. Then there was theft, where my work was printed and sold…but that’s another post for another time.

Little by little, I started to become sought after for web design and commissioned art pieces. I developed a reputation, and a client base. I sold a couple of screensavers a month, and every once in a while, I was hired to do a website.

One day my husband sat down and said, “we need to have a little talk.” Money was very tight, and we needed to find more ways to bring in income. Our web bills were huge; the bandwidth kept going up and up. The sales weren’t really covering the costs, and the commissioned art pieces and web designs were too spotty to be depended upon. We decided to remove the freebies and let my work stand on its own merit.

I removed all the free wallpapers, ornaments, linkware, banners, etc. I made my art site a professional online portfolio to display my work. And something amazing happened. I started to get hired. A lot. Serious buyers began to write to me for quotes on their websites or to create commissioned art pieces. They started to buy prints. They started to pay for the screensavers. And the hatemail piled up in my Eudora mailbox like black poison. Some people cursed me to hell for removing the freebies. I was threatened. I was told I would never sell anything because they would no longer recommend me or promote my work. Some emails were more plaintive. They begged me to keep the freebies online, or pleaded to make it available just for them because they were such loyal “fans.” The emails continued for about two years, warning me I’d ruined my reputation and that nobody would know about me any more because their co-workers wouldn’t see my beautiful work as they passed by their desktops.

My husband encapsulated it very simply: “the complainers were *never* your customers, and were never going to be your customers.” He was right.

That’s the day I started to make a living from my work. And I still get an email once in a while from someone looking for free desktop wallpaper. Some of them are whiny, some of them are nasty. When I do decide to answer them, I blithely tell them that I love my cats, and that I’d rather feed them Fancy Feast than Nine Lives. Or I ask them what they do for a living. When they tell me what they do—”accountant”–I ask them if they give their accounting skills away for free. That usually ends the discussion.

There is a happy medium between offering freebies and paid work. A smart website owner artist will have a little taste of the former to support the latter. It can be argued that I wouldn’t have had the traffic and buzz if I hadn’t offered all that free stuff for so many years. Perhaps that is true, and the free stuff is behind my healthy, sizeable, repeat customer base.

Moral of the story? By all means offer freebies. But make it a little piece of chocolate, not the whole box. When you value your work, you value yourself. And people follow your lead.