When I started my website in 1998 it was a free site with few resources that made me any money. Since I didn't intend to go into business the site became a personal tangent. What it should of been was a simple business site that made me a lot of money with a few resources that at least got me free publicity. Isn't that what a site is all about - to have a steady income stream? I had a lot of affiliate banners all over the place not the a simple and elegant site that is easy for the customer to find what I am selling. You see I did want to make a steady living just after a few months of learning html and putting up the site. I overdid freebies; like most newbies I missed that the whole point of freebies is to gain the trust of your customers, to draw them in so that when they are ready to buy that they will see you have a quality product. If a freebie is not of some value to you it is trash. It should at least bring you some free advertising or traffic.

At that time I had not started my ezines so I wasn't using the freebies to draw enough traffic daily and people to sign up for my lists in hope that some big advertiser would come along and want to sponsor my site or advertise on it. Then the freebies might of made sense. Like Yahoo, who doesn't charge for much of anything except advertising. The more people who come to their site to use their free email or their chats the more they can charge for their advertising.

I read so many articles that say put any freebie on your site to keep your visitors coming back. I don't agree with that. Here are a few freebies that pay.

1. Offering free email - I have offered free email since almost the beginning. I can email my email subscribers and I have over 1500 now with offers and they often buy from me.
2. Offer your articles free - this gets you lots of free advertising.
3. Offer freebies that will bring a large following that increases your traffic to the point you can sell advertising on your site. The kind of freebies that have paid off for me are classified ad sites, game sites, top 100, free journal sites.
4. Offer freebies that entice your prospect to buy your product. (ordering bonuses.)
5. Having a private search engine. This brings a lot of people to my site to search on a search that is specialized. Since my site has a lot of academic information I draw a lot of students looking for information on the search for their homework. I have found that they come looking for information on a Goddess and end up buying from me. I run my banners on my search. But it is still just a method to bring prospects to my product which I must sell them.

Any other kind of freebies are pretty much trash. That has been my experience with freebies on one's site. Hope you find this helpful.