How to earn extra income using free trials

This post explains that one of the ways to earn extra money is by considering the use of free trials in your marketing mix.

Ways to make extra money via free trials

Everyone who runs a home business is looking for ways of making extra income. Being an entrepreneur is about creating wealth. You will see in both on and offline marketing the regular use of discounted or trial periods to gain extra customers. Have you ever wondered why this particular ‘hook’ works? The answer may be different than you expect, it’s because of our old friend ‘predictably irrational behavior’.

How does irrational behavior make extra money at home?

So how does irrational behavior enable us to make extra money at our home business? The answer is something called “virtual ownership”. Virtual ownership is where we behave as if we own something before we actually own it.

The best example is is eBay and is the very basis of their business model. You decide you want a book however you wish to avoid paying full price, so you hop over to eBay. If you have ever placed anything for auction you will note you are always encouraged to put a good image of the item you are selling. This is so the person can see what you are selling, if the image matches what they are looking for they begin to want it.

The image starts to have a hold over them and they place a bid. You get confirmation you are the highest bidder and are happy. You check each day then on the third day you are told you are no longer the highest bidder. Most people at this point behave in a predictably irrational way. They go back to eBay and up their bid.

In fact eBay make it easy and ask you for a maximum bid and they will automatically up the bid for you if you want. The rational thing to avoid looking at the item until 2 minutes before it ends. Then see what the price is, decide if the benefit is still worth the price. If you think it is then wait until 30 seconds before the auction finishes put in your rational maximum bid and refresh the browser.

If you have lost the auction chalk it up to experience, if you have won fine. However in most cases inexperienced uses start a bidding war to early and drive the price up. They do this because in their head they already “virtually own” the item.

Free trials work in the same way. You potential business associate gets to try out the product for a period of time, with reduced functionality. If the product is value added then the person will start to “own” the product and is more likely to convert.

So you can see how a free trial which you might think would be exploited by customers can be predicted to be one of the ways to earn extra money.

Andrew Peel

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