What is the best way to attract new customers into your fold? It can be a challenge convincing customers to open up their wallets, so one of the most effective strategies to employ is to give it away for free. This has quickly become one of the most popular business models in the last couple of years.

If Facebook or Twitter charged for the basic service, neither site would have become anywhere near as big as they are today. In like manner, can you imagine if you had to pay for YouTube or Gmail? It would be much more difficult for those sites to get to their current level of popularity.

Going forward, more and more businesses are adopting a similar model, looking for monetization and revenue for alternate sources. Even where the conventional model still applies, companies are using free giveaways as a great marketing tactic. You can download Peggle Nights for free from Popcap Games if you sign up for an account. From there, you might be swayed to purchase more games from Popcap. Similarly, classic Command & Conquer games are now available as a free download. The hope is that you will buy the new game when it comes out.

Going to the mobile platform, the same is holding true too. The most popular apps on the iPhone are the free ones. For a mobile coupon app, the download for the consumer is free; the revenue comes by charging the advertisers to host their coupons in the app. By making the app free, more people are likely to download and try it.

Have you tried using something for free as part of your marketing plans? Did it work?