There are tons of free offers to choose from. Here are some safety measures, that i have gathered. Nothing is 100 % free. Totally free means no contract, no cost, nada, absolutely nothing! Recently I offered a „free“ ebook on beginning an online home business. To acquire this ebook you were required to give me your email address. Therefore I guess you might say it was not 100 % free, because you needed to give me something in return for it. That item would have given me the authority to send you email periodically about home business stuff. Professionally I think it was a reasonable trade, and not a deceptive one at that. But that’s not exactly what this particular post is about. It comes down to stretching the truth and baiting customers.

Not too long ago I received an offer from a well-known Online marketer who I think sells some very respectable products. The offer appeared to be that this individual was giving away a new product for just $5.00. This product sells for more than $100 so this ended up being quite a bargain. I was thinking, at the time, exactly what does this person mean? Why would anybody offer this product for five bucks when the item had been selling for more than $100. The simple fact was it wasn’t. Not even close. The actual „special offer“ was permitting me to be able to try it out for the $5.00 and following the initial tryout period I would immediately be charged the regular price in regular installments because it was a subscription product, which unfortunately took some digging to find out.

You need to give him credit for originality but it really appeared to be the old classic „bait and switch“ tactic. Some of you could possibly say I was pretty naive to think that the product was only going to cost $5.00. The fact is that I never actually thought that the product was being offered for five bucks, however I’ll bet there were quite a few that did and were quite surprised after they discovered the installment on their charge card bill.

Personally I think that the present economic slow-down has encouraged a lot of marketers to defer to some tried and true hard-core marketing strategies that border on being dishonest.

This is certainly, by no means, a judgement of trial offers because it is not. Point in fact, I have personally acquired products and services from internet marketers which plainly express that the first trial offer period is $X but that the purchase price will be $Y after the trial. This is a great strategy for both product seller and for the product buyer for two factors. First, it’s good for the vendor because it entices buyers to act for a nominal price for a distinct time-frame. Second it’s good for the buyers simply because they get to evaluate the product or service inexpensively before they in fact have to buy it. There’s nothing incorrect with this particularly if it is spelled out plainly inside the sales pitch. It’s a win-win scenario.

My pet peeve is that most often whenever entrepreneurs are selling subscription based products they mask the real month-to-month subscription with an inexpensive first month only and once they have your card number you will start to get the „genuine“ price on your card statement before you’ll find out what’s truly happened.

Tha harsh truth: Study everything twice before you buy. If the numbers aren’t there in the sales copy either do not buy it or email the actual product owner and ask the question. Generally if the offer is reputable the seller will answer your pre-sales query straight away. Otherwise, don’t even bother.

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