Free money
This one is a saying that has stuck with me for many years, although I no longer remember where it originally came from.
“If you are not paying for something it means you are not the customer (obviously), you are the actual product that is being sold”.
This is important to remember when you use sites like Facebook for “free,” Google for “free,” Weebly for “free,” and many more.
This applies to most things, especially online.
“Download This Free Gift Today”, “This report will make you a rich, and it’s free”… and so on. Slogans like these automatically turn you into the product. They put you on an email list used by businesses that try to sell to you, or you are the one that is being sold to others.
This is the harsh and obvious reality people seem to forget, even though it is sitting right in front of them. Google sells YOU as a number in their data base to anyone willing to spend less than one dollar (Google Adwords).
It’s not bad, it’s not great either ... it just is.
Several clever business models have been built in this way.
Everyone wants free stuff, free is great, right? But no one ever stops to think how that is even possible. If I am not extremely lucky, or in the right place at the right time, 99% of the time I know it’s:
Better to pay for it, because it’s cheaper than getting it for free!
This is my response to a Facebook comment, where another user said that she was getting similar service for free. I am not saying that this is bad, I am just saying that “FREE” is not always cheaper in MANY ways.