Welcome to the Escape Blog

Stories like this one about a software firm wanted to charge for their free online tool make me chuckle. Maybe I’m just getting to geeky these days?

Free online tools, like industry-specific calculators, are great. They are easy to create and distribute and the value in offering them on your website is not in the short-term returns you may get for charging for them, but in the long-term brand equity you begin to build from increased profile.

Our free web page analyzer tool achieves this for us and I know some competing web developers out there use it and good luck to them. The tool has also encouraged a massive amount of link love, which in turn has raised our online profile.

It offers an idea that we know what we are talking about when it comes to creating web sites and that is what we are selling - the websites.

I appreciate this approach differs from the software firm mentioned in the news article, but they need to understand that they, like all of us, can not control the web and we can’t control the visitors to our websites.

If you show a bit of up-front love on your website, with knowledge building freebies - you may get some back in return.