Is E-commerce being threatened by the Freebie Hunters?

Hi All,

I have been running a little marketing test on my new E-course (called To Our Success).

The E-course is sent by autoresponder every 2 days for a whole year (i.e 183 lessons) - each one with an 'Action Point'.

So - quite reasonably - I thought that I would charge something for it. $97 was a reasonable figure in my mind as each lesson can be reasonably long.

But...after a lot of manual tweaking and head-scratching - I thought that I would offer it to my list - and one or two other places for free - and only ask for 5 referrals in exchange for the course.

I also have set a deadline of 31st October - which is a 100% cast-iron certainty - as I will be pulling the course to use as part of something bigger.

The friends email addresses are only used the once - and, of course, not added to my mailing list.

I know that some people don't like this refer-a-friend concept - which I am happy to accept.

But guess what?

I've lost track of the amount of people who have either said:

1) I haven't got 5 friends - so can I have it for free anyway?

2) You said it was free - yet I have to give you five friends as referrals!

And there's me - trying to do an honest thing - get their help in increasing my 'exposure' in return for a full-on course for an entire year!

It's bad enough knowing that a proportion of my ezines don't get through because of spam filtering or AOL!

But...it's just a shame that there is such a 'freebie' culture when people like us are trying to run an honest business!

Am I right to expect something in return for my E-course?

Or am I just kidding myself that because so many people are literally giving valuable information away that I should do the same?

What does anyone else think?


Here is the E-course....