# Who really pays for what your business gives away free [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Marketing & sales source booklet: [What to Charge](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/pricing-exchange) Everything your business gives away is covered by the price of something else or by your profit, and the difference between an investment and a leak is whether you knew in advance. What you give away for free is not really free. Somebody pays for it: either the price of something else covers it, or your profit does, when nobody planned to cover it at all. ## Somebody pays for it The source puts this bluntly. The price you charge for one product may have to carry the cost of other things you hand over with no price on them. A **product**, in the language of the booklet, is what your business finally delivers to a customer, the thing they came to you for. And the point is simple: each of those things costs you something to produce, even if the customer never paid a cent for it. So what you gave away always ends up inside the price of something else. When it was planned in advance, that is a business decision. When it was not, it simply comes out of your profit. That explains a feeling plenty of self-employed people know well: I work all the time, and at the end of the month there is nothing left. According to the booklet, a large part of the work simply went out unpriced, and no other price was ever designed to cover it. Suppose an owner gives a free hour of initial consultation to anyone who gets in touch. Every one of those hours is an hour nobody paid for, and they pile up month after month. Or a programmer who fixes small bugs for nothing after handing over a project. Those days do not disappear. They are taken from other projects, the ones where somebody actually pays. And the opposite example: the same programmer, after building a defined period of fixes into the quote as part of the job. Exactly the same work, only now it has a price. ## A sample or a leak But the source does not say never give anything away. It draws a sharp line, and it is probably the most useful part of the chapter. There is a **sample**: something you planned from the start to give for free, whose cost you know, and which sits inside your marketing budget. And there is an **unpriced giveaway**: the product itself, handed over for free because asking for money felt awkward. The booklet calls the first an investment and the second a leak. **The difference between them is not the cost. It is whether you knew about it in advance.** Suppose a trainer posts a video every week. The cost is known, the purpose is known, and that is a sample. The same trainer also gives a long discovery call to anyone who asks. If that call is planned, it is a sample. If it happens because saying no is hard for him, it is a leak. Or a repair shop that offers a pre-purchase inspection without charging for it and treats it as marketing. The owner counts how many of those inspections turn into paid work, and that is what makes it a decision rather than a habit. ## What happens when you give everything away The source takes this all the way, with the picture of a shoe store. If every pair is given away, the store empties, and nobody keeps raising cows for leather or driving nails into soles. Its conclusion: “Since no shoes would exist to be given away.” That takes apart the argument that you give things away to help people. **Anything you give for free keeps existing only while somebody pays for it.** When nobody pays, it stops existing, and then even the person who truly needed it does not get it. In a small business the picture is familiar. You help everyone, you wear yourself out, you close the business, and in the end nobody is getting any help at all. Suppose a consultant gave discounted advice to small businesses that could not afford it. Two years later she shut down, and none of those businesses got anything more from her. And the other way round: the same consultant the second time, charging her full price and offering a fixed number of scholarships each year. Whoever got a scholarship got everything, and the business stayed alive. ## What people get for free gets less attention There is one more observation in the chapter that is easy to miss. The source notes that people may not respect what they receive when there is little or no exchange, meaning they give nothing back for it. The booklet stresses that this is not a moral lesson but an observation about how people behave. Something that arrived without payment is taken less seriously. People are not ungrateful; it is just that the act of paying is part of what makes someone take it seriously. Someone who paid usually turns up to the meeting, does what you agreed on, and complains when something is not working. Someone who got it for free does less of all three. Suppose an owner gives free advice to a friend. The friend does none of what they agreed, and then asks why it is not working. This chapter of the booklet has two exercises: a count exercise and a coverage exercise. Giving something away is not the problem. The problem is giving without knowing you gave, and without anything else covering it. The booklet is general knowledge, not financial advice for your business. - [What to Charge](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/pricing-exchange): A method for pricing instead of copying, and one test that tells you whether the price was right: not on the day they paid, but on the day they came back. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/someone-pays-for-what-you-give-free) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/someone-pays-for-what-you-give-free)