March 08, 2006

IconBuffet are doing what few other icon designers are doing. They're taking their unique style of design and giving it away. Yes, you heard me. Giving it away for free. The way it works is that they create four icon sets a month of varying size (anything from small collections of a dozen to a massive 45 freebies). With each delivery, comes the ability to send the icon set to 5 other people. The catch is that you only get one out of four delivered a month and if you want any of the others, you gotta trade.

What a fantastic way to generate buzz. Give away a taster of your product in a different and innovative manner - this feeds into creating a reason for people to be on the site, and stumble upon new icon sets and other products to buy. It certainly doesn't hurt that their site contains google ads in the 'freebie' zone - which I am sure helps cover the costs.

Compare to traditional old school icon companies. They sell their icon sets - each priced at several hundred dollars - with an air of commodity. There is no relationship, no reason why I would stick around. Nothing to keep me a customer - and with such choice online... well, i'm just a google search away from my next art asset provider.

Good thing I've got IconBuffet and a reason to visit -can't wait to swap and get Marseilles Café - not that I have a use for it!

iconbuffet free+meal switched+on

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