FREE 30 Day Course

In this post, you'll learn one of the fastest strategies to grow your online business!

We’ve talked about a lot of different side hustles and today I’m going to teach you about a strategy that can be applied to pretty much all of them called “free plus shipping”. 

Before we get into the strategy, I need to back up a little bit and explain both why it is effective and how you can explore ideas on how to use it.  If you want to build an amazing online business, the name of the game is acquiring customers and leads.  You want to lure in those customers, get them interested in your product, and encourage them to purchase so that you can break even.  I know — this is very contrary advice.  You should not expect to make a profit on your first sale with a customer!  

Take Spotify, for example.  Their marketing is so on point with their data that when they run advertisements, they actually don't expect to make a profit on the first time you subscribe.  They are making their profit on the third month or after.  If you like Spotify, you will continue to be subscribed, therefore Spotify’s customer lifetime value grows until they have a massive number of subscribers.  

There is a famous phrase quoted by many successful marketers stating that “he or she that spends the most to acquire a customer wins in business.  So, no matter what your side hustle is — selling physical items, selling digital products, selling yourself as a service — you're goal is to get customers.  

What is Free Plus Shipping?

Okay, Adrian… where does free plus shipping come into play?  Free plus shipping is usually tied to a physical product.  In order to sell this product to the customer, you make them an amazing, sexy offer where they only have to pay for shipping.  You remove the price of the product and market it as “free” in order to attract the customer.  

Say you are selling a book.  You could either sell a physical copy of the book for $10.00 or offer the book as “free” and only require the customer to pay a $7.99 shipping cost.  Obviously, the second option is a no-brainer for the customer!  As soon as they type in their information and click submit, you will have just acquired a new customer.  It’s brilliant!  

The true epitome of a successful online business is recurring payments or having a customer purchase products from you over and over again.  If you only focus on getting customers to buy once, it’s always going to be a scrappy game.  This is why the back-end offers are so essential!  They help nurture the customer into coming back and purchasing again.  

I’ll tell you right now that if you're thinking about profit and doing free plus shipping, you're probably going to be disappointed in the outcome. If you're patient enough to break even on the first sale and profit on the second or third, this side hustle is for you!  

My Experience: Robot Necklaces

If you're new to the side hustle world, this strategy might be going over your head right now.  Let’s take a look at a real free plus shipping campaign I ran by selling robot necklaces.  In the description of my old dance videos, I used to link a site that led to my offer.  It would take people to the landing page below:

Instead of just selling digital products (my online tutorials), I was now selling physical products as well.  The whole point of doing this was to acquire customers.  Again, the most trusted act a person can perform is one that involves taking out their credit card and plugging in their numbers.  You want to get customers to do this as much as possible on your website!  

On my landing page, I included a video explaining both the offer and the physical product itself.  I think a video like this adds a personal touch to whatever you are selling and helps pull the customer in.  You don't have to do this, but I think it's neat! 

I also included real customer testimonials on my site.  The beauty of this is that it helps you out because it gets people to vet for your product, and it also just makes you feel good when you know you've paired someone with an item they really love.  

The bottom of the page is where the customer would actually begin the ordering process.  First, they would enter their name and email (yay, more leads!).  After that, they would be taken to the shipping and payment page where they would finish the transaction.  

This strategy works!  I charged $7.99 for shipping and hundreds of people bought my little robot.  Here's the catch — anyone could go onto Aliexpress and buy the same exact robot necklace for $2.59.  Even though the shipping on my end was more than the actual price of the product, I still made a dollar or so of profit on each unit sold. 

In the packaging of the robot necklace, I would include a discount code for the tutorials on my website.  This backend offer helped push people to my website and in turn, make me more money!  

Do you think you're going to take a shot at free plus shipping?  Let me know your ideas below!

I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Peace and God bless. 

For the complimentary worksheets and resources, go to adrianbrambila.com/30days.