The Unlimited Power of FREE

What’s the price of free?
What’s the cost of it?

During my time at university, I recall a social experiment. People walking on the street were offered two options:

• Low-quality chocolate for free.
• High-quality chocolate at a very high discount.

What would you pick? Which option do you think won this particular A/B test?
Free was recurrently the most chosen.
It’s a shame I haven’t been able to find that video, but the finding stayed with me. It’s been almost two decades now.

Since then, every time I see a “free” sign or a percentage discount tag, I get a red flag — that “Hold on a second, what’s the trick here?” moment.

I also had the chance to work in digital marketing and observed that, again, for the majority of buyers… free and discount offers kept working and making people convert.
(“Convert” is a funny word for me, as in Spanish it sounds the same as become.)
What do we become by accepting the free hook?
Do we stop, think, compare… choose, review, and repeat the same or similar steps with every decision we make?
Do we reflect even without the warning?
Have we ever thought that prices often go up before the next sale or big buying date?

A freebie is not a present, but a hook.

Scratching a bit deeper, I realised there’s a plethora of digital products and services we use without cashing out directly from our wallets… at least, not in the same way we do when shopping at the corner shop.

Who pays so that you have free email?
Who pays so that you have free social media?
Who pays so that you spend hours you thought were minutes scrolling your phone screen?

The technology you use is paid for and owned by a business.
And in business, there’s a basic rule: I invest X and I want to get +X in return.
And I’ll make as much as possible. That’s the general rule of thumb without getting into much detail.

And there’s more to it.
Going back to who pays — we’ve agreed someone puts money in for some products and services.
How do they get their money back, plus profit?
One of the ways is, well, with you.
As you use and engage, you become data:

• Your likes = data
• Your views = data
• Your scrolling = data
• Your stopping scrolling = data
• Your accessing at 7 am on a Monday = data

With the huge amount of data created, companies do very powerful profiling so you get, to name a few things, ads and are influenced — but not only — to buy.

These mechanics are still valid, with some variations and evolution.
I do know there’s complexity to it, but please accept this exercise to clarify by simplifying the basics here.
Once you are told you can buy cheap… you tend to expect, demand, and search for cheap.
Obsessively.
Your main focus becomes that, and all you want is some relief out of it.

What you do becomes data.
What you do becomes data owned by those offering you freebies and discounts.
What you do is owned by someone else — not you.

Shall we ask a bit deeper again?
There’s also a chance that not only what you buy or do becomes data owned by a corporation.
What about…

• What you feel
• What you think
• Your pain
• Your joy
• Your life?

The very act of asking and reflecting on it is, I’d say, a necessary habit to nurture and care for.

In the end, the more you know, the more chances you might have to decide to what extent it’s of any value to stop enjoying a moment for what it is — just to break it and seek approval from people who don’t give a damn about who you are.

Free tech is fed by use.
Their main business KPI is users.
Their valuation depends on you.
AI apps’ definition of efficiency aims to keep you using them and encouraging others to do so.

I just hope you think a bit — and don’t trade yourself for free.

Cutting Room Floor: Ideas from Early Drafts

• Happy people don’t buy.
• Blumer, symbolic interactionism.
• Revenue streams strategy: the fallacy of the 3 options.
• The cheap boomerang. Buy cheap to become cheap.
• The expensive costs of cheap.
• Ethimology of free and gratis.

Post Image source: Wikipedia, Tom Morris CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12861899