It is a good question, and one I wanted to know myself. I choose a company that offered so called "Free Business Cards" and began to browse their website.

I first noticed that they didn't just have the free business cards offer, but they also sold upgrades to the free package. Is that how they make their money? Only off of the upgrades?

This particular company also sold magnetic business cards, plastic business cards, metal business cards, and other types of business cards. In addition to the business cards, they also sold company letterhead, custom printed envelopes, and other types of office stationery.

The free business cards offer was beginning to make a little more sense.

I would guess that the percentage of people taking the free business cards are mainly business people. Those people probably also need envelopes, letterhead and other office stationery. Maybe they make their money on the upsell.

But are they really free?

I decided that I should go ahead and order some of these free business cards. This way I would know for sure whether or not the business cards are really free.

I decided which company I would order from then went to the order section

The first thing I had to do was design my business card. After my design I got to the order section, are they really free after all the work I did?

When I got to the final checkout, there were many options, more upgrades available. I chose not to get additional cards. Then I had to choose not to have my free business cards laminated.

After all of this, I found out that "Free Business Cards" are really free!