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Free stupidity

By Arthur Webster of My Local Gazette

The internet marketing world is currently being watered down by the sheer stupidity of believing that denying the value of a product is good business sense.

You have probably seen (if you watch the internet marketing world) the huge growth in free internet marketing products that is flooding the in-boxes of anybody who ever got themselves onto a mailing list.

This could be seen as a good idea by some people and, indeed, it was - to start with. The novelty of 'something for nothing' followed the traditional line that has been established in real marketing for thousands of years. I suppose it is unfortunate that manufacturers of real and useful products don't send us all free samples - but it is eminently sensible, though. How can any business expect to succeed if it gives away what it produces?

There is now a desperate scramble to get onto the 'free' band-waggon as less knowledgeable and less experienced internet marketers are persuaded to give away their newly created products.

The whole exercise appears to be involved with 'list building' but is there really any value in a list of people dedicated to collecting anything that is free, whether it is useful or even going to be used? Looking at the free stuff that is available it is, for the most part, regurgitated junk that has been around for several years.

Commerce or trade has been around for thousands of years. The internet has been around for less than twenty years. How strange that thousands of years of commercial know-how is cavalierly dismissed by internet marketers because they have just invented a whole new way of going broke - without even trying.

It is fortunate that these fashions or fads tend to be short lived but I wonder how much damage the 'free' phenomenon is doing to the possibility of online commerce returning to sanity. If you are an internet marketer and you subscribe to the 'free' line, be honest - is your free stuff of value or is it simply something that you got for free and want to fob off on your list so that they might feel inclined to buy from you in the future?

I do not believe it is possible to give away quality products and remain a viable business. Certainly my own experience of most of the free products is that they make me want to unsubscribe as quickly as possible to make sure I do not get asked to buy a product of equally dismal quality.

Contributor's Note

The free line will be defended to bankruptcy by those poor marketers who have swallowed the rubbish spouted by gurus and recent converts. It's time to be honest - free is measure of value, isn't it?

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My Local Gazette for Costa del Sol
Local news for Costa del Sol
www.costadelsol.mylocalgazette.com

Great article! It's unfortunate that all that free stuff is cluttering the Internet search results and you have to search through all the junk to find the really good nuggets of information. Will the junk ever disappear and finally get the burial it deserves?

It is interesting that the Wikileaks situation has exposed a measure of internet censorship that could be used to a much greater extent in the future.
Wikileaks lost their hosting and their PayPal account because their activity was considered illegal. While this is a debateable point, this radical response to the public being given access to the truth shows just how easy it will be to censor the whole business side of the web.
The USA, of course, will lead the charge claiming the terroroist threat as a justification.
Not only will the junk disappear - so will our freedom to have a cyber life.

Funny to see someone saying what i have been for years. Free = no profit, and profit pays salaries. Free is only good for a business if it adds value. List building can have value because a good list can generate revenue.

A list full of free loaders is not much use me thinks. I could be convinced otherwise but from my own experience, I have never bought any of the get rich quick programs which offer the FREE white papers that say nothing if you subscribe.

I have started writing my series, SEO unplugged because I am tired of seeing all the bull, hot air and awesome nothingness in articles by SEO gurus.

Hi, Guy,
I am finding your SEO articles a useful insight into the 'business' side of the internet. Unfortunately, the 'list building' exercises being carried out by every potential sharketer who obtained a free copy of 'build your list with free stuff' is muddying the water.
Add to these the people who are using programmes to build multitudes of web sites with little or no value in the hopes of gaining a little Adsense income from each one and you can see how the web is being diluted.
Since getting rid of most of my email accounts a few weeks ago, I have been doing a little research on one 'free' product. I have collected this product (about list building) from nineteen (19) different marketers using five different titles between them with absolutely no other changes to the content. Not even their own links!
Sad!

The get rich quick squad have one thing in common, mostly it's being broke and desperate. Every one of them that gives up spawns another 5 that think they can make it. The internet is littered with blogs that are never updated, get rich quick scams and other crap. Sadly there is no way of not seeing that shit.

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