Many people are afraid to give away their products for free. Giving away products for free as a 'loss leader' can be a highly effective strategy for building a targeted subscribers list that you can follow-up with and build relationships.
Giving away a free product allows you to build up a relationship with your subscribers. Especially if your product helps them solve their problems. And that's valuable. Offer a short, lean report that gets to the heart of their problems and offers tons of workable solutions, and you'll have many happy subscribers.
Some other free products you can give away include audio recordings, videos and even complete membership sites. You can have a membership site that has a free subscription, and an upgrade to a premium option, so that's how you can potentially make money with that idea.
Typically you should create a simple website to give away your free product. This simple page should have an opt-in form for visitors to opt-in to your list. Once your subscribers have confirmed their opt-in, you can send them to a One-Time Offer page that offers a paid product that is an upgrade to the free product or that complements the free product well!
You can use this system to build an operational business model that pulls in leads and sales for you. Just send the traffic and your system will be churning these out for you day and night. Give something away for free, and your subscribers will reciprocate you by responding to your emails!