Copyright 2004 by Windy Dawn Marketing and Windy Windblad. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text intact and unchanged except for minor improvements such as misspellings and typos.
If you spend any time online surfing the Internet or any time reading magazines that deal with business topics, you will more than likely run across countless business opportunity offerings --- the headlines will scream out at you “FREE this and FREE that and FREE! FREE! FREE!”
Here’s one such ad (copied directly from a published article–there’s many more)….
Free home based business by Mehdi Heidari
It is completely free home based business. We make your website free and teach you through our internet marketing course, secrets of internet millionaires, get out of debt system and much much more to promote your business
About the Author Mehdi Heidari was born in 1979 in Aarhus Denmark and then immigrated to Canada. He is a successful man in his home based business and helps the other people to make their home based business for free.
His headline is “Free Home Based Business. His first explanation is “…completely free home based business. We make your website free…” OK, so everything’s “FREE”!
Not quite,,,,,,Remember, there’s no free lunches left in the world anymore. They even shut down the free meals in Las Vegas.
His hook? The very next statement is “…and teach you through our internet marketing course….” They’re giving away a free home business, yes, and they’re giving away a free internet web site, yes (it’ll cost later, of course). But they pay for this through sales of the course, a course which you purchase. Not free.
I used to have my web site hosted “Free” on – well, I won’t mention them because I’m not interested in giving out free advertising. But while it was “free” to me, someone was paying the hosting fee – and in a way I was “paying” for it too.
I “paid for my ‘free’ web site” with pop up ads which came up on my web pages every time you moved to a new page or every 30 seconds, whichever came first. I paid in inconvenience, someone else paid in the cash it took to host the web site --- the persons who were putting the pop-up ads on. Hey, they had a good deal with me. I had nearly 200 pages up there. That’s a whole lotta pop-up ads to be seen. A whole lotta advertising paying for my little ol’ web site.
When anyone offers you something for free, you are going to pay for it sooner or later --- there aren’t any free lunches left.
So how much is the “free” going to cost? Well, figure it out. Figure out how much the item really costs the person who is giving it away. Then multiply that figure by at least 2X to 5X.. This will give you a pretty good idea of the range of how much it’s going to cost you.
Just as a “for example”, I’ve spent my lifetime developing a “certain flair”, a “certain skill” as it were, both as a bridge player and as a writer. I’m almost 70, so its most of my adult life that I’ve been learning to write effectively. How much is that worth? Let’s say I write a booklet sharing my bridge secrets with you, teaching you how you can learn to play bridge as well as I play. How much is that worth? Maybe $20? How about $15? For sure at least $10. Now I give it away --- why? Only because you have purchased something from me which pays me what I believe is fair value (a good profit for me) and I want to “give you a gift that has extra value to you”!
Are you beginning to get the picture? No, I wrote my bridge book way back in 1968 and maybe I should write another one now? But the point I was illustrating is that, if I did write a book and if I then gave it away it would be to make you feel good about something you were buying from me, something which made enough profit for me that I could afford to give you something of value, something created out of my life’s experience.
There are no free lunches –-- and any time someone tries to convince you that there is, look for the real cost of what you’re getting and make an educated decision on whether its really worth it. Is what you are paying for what you are buying worth what you are getting “for FREE”?
Oh, yes. I’m off of the “free” hosting --- and I no longer have those annoying pop-up ads coming up on my web site. Make sure that the next time someone offers you something “for FREE” that you check it out and make sure it really is worth what you are paying for it. Because you will be paying for it.
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