I gave away the tool for free and charged for the data

most people build a tool, slap a price on it, and wonder why nobody pays.

i tried something different. i built an SEO scanner that checks 10 things on any website. title tags, meta descriptions, alt text, headings, structured data, canonical URLs, viewport, page speed, HTTPS, OG tags. scores out of 100.

the tool is free. anyone can use it.

what costs money is the dataset i built USING the tool.

i scanned thousands of agency websites. extracted their contact info. compiled it into a clean CSV with 798 agencies across 54 countries. that CSV costs $19.

why this works better than charging for the tool

free tools spread. people share them. they bookmark them. they come back. every time someone uses the free scanner, they see the brand. some percentage of those people also need agency contacts.

paid tools dont spread. they sit behind a paywall where nobody discovers them.

the tool is marketing for the data product.

the numbers so far

tool users: growing (free chrome extension live)
data product sales: $0 (just launched)
chrome extension installs: listed on gumroad at $9
IH engagement from posting about the tool: 60+ posts live

the strategy is right even if the execution is still catching up.

free tool: https://vemtrac-outreach.pages.dev
paid data: https://vemtrac-outreach.pages.dev/leads ($19)
free sample (50 agencies): https://vemtrac.gumroad.com/l/blole
chrome extension: https://vemtrac.gumroad.com/l/klwksv ($9)

what do you give away free to sell something else?