Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

There may not be any such thing as a free lunch and people know that because they don't even search for the term 'free lunch' but that doesn't stop them from searching for plenty of other freebies on the Net.

In fact, according to Hitwise - the Web analytics people - for the week ended June 16 2006 3.9% of all searches in the United States contained the word 'free'. People searched for things like free games, free music, free ringtones, free credit reports and free Myspace layouts but they weren't the most popular terms that included the word 'free' - not by a long shot.

In this industry we know that people search for lots of free stuff so we shouldn't be surprised to learn that during the week I mentioned above, among the most popular search terms that included the word 'free', were terms that also included the word 'sex'. 'Free sex stories', 'free sex', 'free sex videos' and 'free six pics' ranked highly among the top 20 'free' search terms.

Now if you're dealing in mainstream you would be interested to know that any search term that included the word 'free' is quite likely influenced by the time of year. Hitwise suggests that 'free shipping' is important around seasonal holidays such as Christmas.

'Free games' becomes a more popular search term during summer when people become bored and want to be entertained. 'Free chat' and 'free movies' are also likely to be popular terms during summer according to Hitwise but I'm guessing that the 'free' sex terms stay popular all year round.

So how does knowing that really help us? After all we should know that people are always out there searching for free sex and that's the last thing we really want to show them. What we want is for them to spend money on sex so that we can get some of that money into our own pockets.

I can still remember what was almost a mantra for Webmasters on one of the newbie boards that I used to hang out on; you never ever offered surfers anything like free sex. As far as that board was concerned you didn't even use the term 'free sex' in your domains, keywords or anything else that might be related to your site because 'free sex' didn't put money in your pocket.

Well to some degree that attitude still has some resonance for me but when you think of all those people out there using those 'free' search terms it seems crazy not to try and grab your share of that traffic. Sure they may be looking for freebies and ultimately you want them to part with some money but might there be somewhere in between where you can give them what they want and they can give you what you want?

According to that newbie board there certainly wasn't but I'm no longer persuaded that the newbie board is ... or even was ... right. Perhaps I'm being unfair to that board because back then to turn those who were looking for free sex into people who were willing to part with their cash was an art form and probably took more skill than most newbies on that board had.

But these days things are different and converting freeloaders into cash in your pocket is a little easier. These days we've got sponsors who are offering free memberships and they are taking on the hard job of convincing freeloaders to part with their cash once the freeloaders have signed up for their free memberships.

All we have to do is convince the surfers that the sites offering free memberships are genuine and worth joining. Of course that's not going to be incredibly easy. People these days are a little more cautious about sites that make promises that are too good to be true. But if you take the right approach then you should be able to convince your surfers that the free membership site that you're offering to them is worth joining and that will put money into your pocket.

Of course the amount of money each free membership signup puts in your pocket may not be as much as if you sold that surfer on a paid membership but then there might be economies of scale here for you. Two paid memberships at $35.00 each are never going to be as good as 10 free memberships at $20.00 each.

In the end it all comes down to what looks best for you and perhaps there's a way of offering your surfers both a paid membership and then a free membership site if they don't take the paid option. Whatever you choose to do, don't dismiss the free signup option without first testing it on your traffic.

If you ignore all that 'free' traffic you're definitely going to be leaving money on the table.