FREE REPORT! How often do you see those words as you surf the Internet looking for information? About a bazillion? Everybody seems to be offering a free report about almost any and every subject under the sun now days. The question is, why? Why should anybody go to all of the work, trouble and effort to produce a report that is not going to be sold but be given away for free? Ah! You see the point in NOT to sell the free report and make a bushel basket full of money from the sales. The entire point of a ‘free report’ is to give people the report in exchange for their names and email addresses. Not that the report isn’t valuable... sometimes a report is and sometimes it’s just a bunch of hooey, but the names and email addresses of those who download these free reports are much more valuable than the report will ever be...even the good ones.
There are exactly two kinds of people who live and work on the Internet. There are those who are marketing gurus and those who are not. The latter number far exceeds the number of the former. There are a few very, very, VERY savvy marketing gurus out there who know how to put together a ‘free’ report and market it so effectively that it takes on a life of its own and continues to produce the desired results (list building if you haven’t already guessed) for weeks, months or even years after the free report is released. Free reports are used by many Internet marketers as incentives to encourage people to join a mailing list. That is so common that it has almost become ineffective. These free reports that are offered as incentives to join mailing lists probably contain as much useful information as the kind that are marketed by these marketing geniuses. They just aren’t as effective at producing the desired list building effect. Let me give you an example: Mike Filsaime’s “Death of Internet Marketing” is a prime one. “Death of Internet Marketing” was a free report that was launched with a lot of fanfare. Mr. Filsaime PAID $1 for every lead that was produced by his “Death of Internet Marketing”. Yes, that’s what I said...he PAID. Now, if you were an Internet marketer with a list and you received an offer to be paid one dollar for each time a member of your list downloaded a FREE report, wouldn’t you jump on the bandwagon? Of course you would...everybody would...heck, everybody DID!
