Internet Marketing and School Lunches

July 2, 2008 · Print This Article

How many times have you heard expressions like “give away your best stuff” or “moving the free line”?  I understand what they’re getting at, but I’m going to go out on a limb here [Please don't smite me Guru Gods] and profess not to love those expressions.

 Don’t get me wrong – I like to give away free stuff and do it all the time.  I also love to help people as much as I can.  But I worry that when I give everything away for free that my work won’t be viewed as valuable or appreciated… because it’s free.

Remember the kid at school who used to give away all the good parts of his lunch in an effort to get the cool kids to like him?  It never worked and he just got used.  He didn’t make any lasting friendships and when he stopped giving away his good stuff, the kids ran to the next one in line who was willing to try the trade food for friendship route.

Then there was the savvy kid who would only part with his lunch if coin crossed his palm or he could trade his food for something of value.  This guy’s goods had perceived value and he had an actual following of kids who would ask him when he was going to bring this or that again or what was in his lunch that day.

This kid probably even sweet-talked his mom into throwing extra cookies into his lunch, and he just might have convinced her to buy a certain brand of chips because he knew what his buddies wanted.

Okay, I’ll stop with the analogy now before I get too carried away.  I was just pondering out-loud… don’t have anything new to sell right now, dang it. :-)

So what do you think?  Go ahead and leave a comment.

Thanks,
Peggy

Related posts:

  1. Internet Marketing Seminars… Finally
  2. Marketing Fear and Frustration

Filed Under Main 

Comments

2 Responses to “Internet Marketing and School Lunches”

  1. Carol Smith on July 15th, 2008 2:13 pm

    Peggy,
    I agree with you totally. I also believe this is one of the hardest lines to draw in the sand. I have always under priced myself.

    Maybe that comes from years of teaching public school where we were conditioned to accept very low salaries even though we knew we were offering superior product.

    Carol

  2. admin on July 16th, 2008 3:29 pm

    Hi Carol,
    I absolutely agree with you that public school teachers work for peanuts. It’s really sad that we pay them so little yet they have a very important job educating our kids.

    I also under-price myself (in internet marketing), and that’s why I sometimes ask for pricing feedback from others before I decide.

    Thanks, Carol.

    Peggy