Internet marketing seems to have gone 'free mad'. Freebies have their rightful place in the online marketing bag of tricks: 'subscribe to my Ezine and I'll give you a free eBook' and 'join this opportunity today and I'll give you a bonus course' are often effective. However, many Internet marketers seem to have lost the plot.

If you have a sensibly priced product or service, with a money-back guarantee, do you really need to bundle in 10 'bonus products' to sell it?

I nearly added another eBook to my library last week. My cursor was hovering on the 'Order Now' button but I decided not to click. Guess what put me off? Too expensive? No, the price was fine. Not enough freebies? No. There were too MANY freebies and by the time I got to reading about how 'Bonus #9' would change my life, I'd lost interest in the eBook I was about to buy. My state of mind had shifted from enthusiastic to suspicious.

The perceived value of the eBook I was about to buy got lower as more and more bonus products were added to the deal.

Imagine an offline retailer, who normally sells a chocolate bar for 50 cents, with a special offer: '3 bars for the price of 2.' Or a travel agent with an offer on a vacation: 'book today and get 20% discount.' The offline marketing world is full of deals and offers - because they work. And of course, they work online too.

But what would you think if the retailer had said: 'buy this chocolate bar today for 50 cents and I'll give you 5 bonus products: a cigarette, some gum, 2 paper clips, last month's free ads newspaper and a comb'? You'd think he was out of his mind - all you wanted was a chocolate bar.

On the Internet - at least at the home-based business end of the market - an unwritten law seems to have crept in which says that to get the sale you need to bundle in lots of free products.

It's a fine line between adding value to your products and DEVALUING them. I'm selling my own eBook for $15 and yes I throw in a free eBook as a bonus. But there's only one AND it's complementary to the eBook I'm selling, not just complimentary. The free eBook is a useful and relevant bonus. If I were to load up the offer with 5 other bonus products, it would make it cluttered and unnecessarily 'generous'. I would get fewer sales.

Until very recently I also included the sales pitch 'buy my eBook for $15 TODAY and I'll throw in a free eBook.' I've taken out the word 'TODAY' because I don't have any plans to withdraw the free bonus tomorrow (or the day after for that matter.) If you DO have a real price rise around the corner or a genuine limited period offer, that's fine. However, many of the Internet marketing offers I see include something like 'order by this Friday, 16 February' and when I see the same ad the following month it says 'order by this Friday, 9 March.' JAVA scripts and suchlike have allowed Internet marketers to invent a new concept: a rolling 'this Friday.'

Oh, and have you seen this type of offer: 'buy this eBook for $29.95 TODAY and I'll give you a marketing course worth $1,495 absolutely FREE'? Does the prospective customer really perceive the free marketing course to be worth $1,495? I don't think so. The word 'credibility' springs to mind!

Finally, if you really want the 109 bonuses I promised, I'll try and find some of the free 'Killer Reports' I've acquired over the past few months. Now, let me see, which folder did I save them in...?