15
13 Comments

Tip: Offering something for free? Try saying "$0" instead of "free" to increase conversions.

Giving things away for free is a great way to grow your email list and even increase sales. But it turns out that "free" might not be the best way to phrase it. Increase conversions by saying that it'll cost "$0".

After testing a number of different offers, researchers showed that free promotions are more successful when presented as costing "$0" than they are when presented as being "Free". This might be because phrasing it as "$0" reminds the customer that it has monetary value and therefore brings their attention to the cost-saving aspect of the offer. As might be expected, the effect is greater the more price-sensitive the customer is about the product, so keep that in mind. And remember to A/B test, as quick tips like this are rarely one-size-fits-all.

More 30-second growth tips?

Every day we share a tiny, bite-sized tip for growing your business. Click here to see more and get Growth Bites in your inbox 👌

  1. 3

    This is interesting. I couldn't access the full paper so I don't know how they conducted the research. Have you tried this yourself yet? Any real-world results you can share?

    Thanks for sharing.

    1. 2

      Hi @danial, in terms of proving the hypothesis, this is one of the most solid research papers I've analyzed. They tried the effect in 10 different experiments and it worked each time, so the certainty is quite high.

      In terms of real-world results, I haven't had a chance to see concrete results in action yet. I know a few of my subscribers started A/B testing it but I've yet to hear back. Love to hear if it works out for you!

      P.S.: DM me if you'd like the paper, happy to share it :)

    2. 2

      Not personally - I'm just going off of the study. But @tdmck is testing it out with "at no cost" which he believes will have the same effect. His blog is linked above and here's the IH post where he mentioned his experiment. Maybe he'll have more info.

  2. 2

    Yeah, I read an article like this. Tested it out on one of my headlines and it worked magic!

    1. 1

      Glad to hear it worked out 🙌 Thanks for sharing!

  3. 2

    I'm going to give this a try on vimforvscode.com. Thanks for the tip!

    1. 3

      @jsjoeio awesome! Could you share if you find a difference? I would love to hear if you see a difference in your context
      Cheers :)

      1. 3

        Sure thing! I can share after :)

        1. 1

          Awesome, thank you!

          1. 2

            I added this to vimforvscode.com on January 15th. Between the 15th and the 31st of January, I had 15 signups so about 1 per day. The month before, I only had 7 signups. Hard to say if this is the reason people are signing up though.

            Note: signup = preview the course for $0

            1. 2

              Very cool, thank you for following up Joe! I agree it's hard to say (also considering the month before was December) - but seems very promising!

  4. 2

    Interesting. That makes sense. Thank you for sharing.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 47 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 27 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments How I Launched FrontendEase 13 comments