Attention Idea: I’m offering this for free

I’m offering this for free

General

Pat Walls

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Updated: April 26th, 2025

The Post

Title/Hook: I’m offering this for free
Format: Cold email
Impressions:
How many followers they had at the time:

Check out the post ->

Why it works

This is one of the few cold emails I’ve actually responded to, and I actually ended up using their service.

A few reasons why it worked on me:

Offering services for free is an amazing way to get your first few customers. They explain why they’re doing it and they’re honest “I get to build my portfolio” - I wanted to help them out because of this. I liked that they mentioned why they built it, how they got the idea and it related to their personal use case to Starter Story.

How you can do it:

I think a less is more approach is better with these cold emails. Do your research on 5-10 companies that would benefit from using your product/service. Think about who you want in your “portfolio” and how you can offer it for free.

The best part: you don’t even need to have a real product built for this yet. Try and drum up some interest and get a few “free” interested customers.

Can quite literally copy and paste this exact email for your own “dream customer”.

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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