'Free' is not a popular word with printers. Trading in a highly competitive commodity-driven market, price is crucial and every printer in the land will be able to quote the names of competitors that have gone in at cost (or below) in order to win a job. There seems to be a consensus that free print means suicidal pricing.

However, a number of printers have used the offer of free print as either a successful promotional tool, or a way of selling cross subsidy, added-value products or services, at a higher margin. In a world where ‘free' is an increasingly common price for goods or information, some are finding it a way of making a sale, in order to profit elsewhere.

Under criticism
When in May this year, Bristol-based Kingsdown Printing sent out a promotion to prospective clients offering five hours of free press time, where the client paid only for the consumables and delivery costs, there was a fierce backlash on the message boards of printweek.com.

"What has print come to? We'll be paying the customers next", wrote one blogger. "This is absolute madness," fumed another. However, five months on and Becky O'Brien, sales director at Kingsdown Printing, says the offer was "the most successful campaign we have ever done".

The company received around 20 enquiries and the offer was eventually taken up by 10 companies. O'Brien says the promotion picked up one great customer that has reaped dividends. Overall, the campaign cost around £2,000 of press time, she says, and as it was during a quiet time, so the £2,000 would have been paid out to the staff in any event. She says: "The key question is, how much would you pay to win a new customer? There are many hidden charges, such as sales time as well as travel to and from prospective clients' sites, that go into winning a new customer and this promotion brought them to us."

In his book Free: the Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, examines the growth of the ‘freeconomy'. Analysing the rise of the internet and consequential creation of open source software along with the growth of Google, he traces the explosion of free products on the market and examines the business models behind them.
‘Free' is probably a concept that most printers will be more familiar with in their clients' business models than theirs. This week, the London Evening Standard joined hundreds of free publications launching as a free edition supported by advertising. Anderson's book looks at how the online model of free, enabled by minimal distribution costs, is being interpreted in the physical world and argues that free is becoming more commonplace in line with consumers' expectations.

More and more printers are beginning to seize the initiative. Print giant Vista Print offers customers free business cards - a model that has enabled the company to grow into a printing operation that turns over half a billion dollars a year.

The web-to-print order system and high automation within its print sites enables the company to cut production to a fraction of the time and cost it would take other printers. The more orders it gets, the cheaper the unit cost becomes and the promotion, generally circulated through viral e-mails, pulls in clients, many of which will upgrade to higher margin work.

Evolving concept
However, there are different ‘free' print-enabling business models now emerging. Last month, Hotprints launched a ‘Freemium' addition to its photobook range. Via social networking sites Facebook and Bebo, users can access the company's web-to-print portal and create a free, advertising-supported photobook.

Mohammad Ahmadabadi, co-founder and chief executive of Hotprints, says: "We can offer free print as the advertising is personalised to that user and we know that the user will see the ad so the advertisers get value."

Advertising potential
Hove-based Ticket Media has taken the concept even further. The business began life as a paper convertor for ticket rolls. The company then moved into printing the tickets before managing director Jeremy Burbidge realised that the tickets had more potential as an advertising vehicle.

"The salesman at the time just saw the tickets as a commodity and was adding a small margin for the print. We hit upon the idea of offering free rolls to the bus companies with advertising on the back of them," he says.

Ticket Media began with a local bus company, selling adverts for a small fast food chain. Within four months, it had sold a national campaign with KFC and was distributing free ticket rolls to every single bus company in the UK. With some clients, the business is even offering cashback, or as the blogger on printweek.com feared, "paying the customer" to take on print.

‘Free' is a phenomenon of the modern age. The vast competition and massively reduced distribution costs brought by the internet have resulted in free information and products available legally in almost every industry. Print is no exception and, as the examples above show, there is money to be made for nothing in print.