Setting Up A Product For Free – Pros And Cons
Have you seen all the offers for free trials of products posted all over the web?
Why do you think this is? The answer is simple. The conversion rates of these offers are through the roof. We just got done testing this offer for one of my clients who receives over 1,000 unique visitors a day and it doubled his conversions.
Yes, you read that correctly, DOUBLED his conversions!
However, there are a few issues with setting up a product for free, especially if it’s a downloadable product and you don’t charge shipping.
If the initial purchase is for free or $0.00, 1ShoppingCart™ will not send this transaction to the gateway for verification. So someone could put in a false credit card and they will receive your product and when the time comes to charge the credit card after the free trial it will come up declined and you are out the money!
However, there are two options around this.
- You can change the offer to a $1 offer… We call it the “Try It For A Buck” offer. For this the card will be charged $1. This still pulls better than a normal full price offer, however it doesn’t convert as high as the free offer.There is something psychological that triggers in the buyers mind if the word free is presented. So for this offer the card will be charged 1.00, then charged the remainder at the end of the trial.
- If you ship products, run a free offer and then charge shipping. This way the product is free but 1ShoppingCart™ will charge the shipping and you can verify the credit card is valid.
In fact, the second option is exactly how we setup the offer which just recently doubled our conversions.
Hope this helps, and as you know, I am the 1ShoppingCart™ Expert so if you need anything don’t be afraid to ask.
Who is this very knowledgable Tyler Sorensen? I am so very happy I stumbled upon this blog! I will be checking back for your next post!!
How do you manage the taxes in Magento? I mean how do you apply the discounts.. Any tips?
Hi Kaylee,
I have hundreds of tips on what could be fixed. Feel free to email us by visiting http://www.everythingwebbased.com/support/ and we can setup a good time to chat.
All the best,
Tyler
Hello Tyler,
We recently talked to someone from sales who said bundling the free product (like a newsletter) with another paid product would be a good way to utilize the autoresponder.
Do you think it would be possible to write up code for a contact form field where customers could enter their email addresses, which would then send them a customized email with a link to the free product. Rather than uploading a digital file?
We do not have the budget to use aweber, so we were wondering if there was any way we could still use the autoresponder without using 1SC’s HTML editor or creating a bundle and uploading a digital file.
This doesn’t really make sense to me.
Hi Christine,
If I am reading your comment correctly, you are asking if we could come up with codes for 1ShoppingCart to have a client enter in their name and email and then they get an auto-responder email once they enter in their information, Correct? If so, 1ShoppinCart allows this in their auto-responder section of the software! All you need to do is create the auto-responder and then use their ‘Generate Form Code’ button and they will walk you through the steps.
Also, you can tie a product to a specific auto-responder no problem. It’s under the ‘Optional Values’ then ‘Upsell’ tab in the specific product options.
If you need specific help or want me to do this for you please let me know.
If I misread the question feel free to explain further.
All the best,
Tyler
Hey Tyler
We want to set up a $1 trial like you mentioned but not quite sure how to do it in the product creation (this is for digital products). We have a full pay and a monthly pay option. I know for the full pay its somewhat easy. $1 to start and then the balance in how ever many days we choose. But how do we get that done for a recurring set up.
Example: Charge $1 to buy, then in 7 days charge $97 and then $97 every 30 days for the next 5 months.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Hi Adrianne,
Your example looks great. We like to give people “free access” for 7 or 14 days, and then we always bill on 30 day increments. People are used to that and can budget easier that way. As far as the specific setup goes, do you need help with that?
Tyler
I understand how to do it for free. I am not sure how you do it for $1.00. This would be for a digital product. An example on how this is setup would be great.
Just wanted to let you know I got this sorted. Its actually pretty easy once you know how to do it.
Set the sale price at a dollar then go to recurring and set the plan to recur every 30 days. Set the delay to happen 7 days later. Set the number of recurrences and the price. Easy
Thanks again
Nice work