Well, let's be fair. First, I mischaracterized Ferriss' wording and have corrected my original post: He suggested showing the final price, capturing emails and

Well, let's be fair. First, I mischaracterized Ferriss' wording and have corrected my original post: He suggested showing the final price, capturing emails and phone numbers, and asking the customer to click through to a CC-collection screen... but not actually collecting CC numbers. I'm sorry for the error. Second, Ferriss makes it clear that he understands that many people wouldn't find such a practice to be ethical, even though "it is legal if the billing data isn't captured". (That, by my reading of the FTC rules, seems to be true.) Finally... I think that any tutorial on direct marketing technique would be shortchanging you if it didn't suggest the possibility of doing dry testing. I get the impression that it's not exactly uncommon. Indeed, the entire personal computer industry was founded by a company that launched their first product -- the Altair 8800 -- by taking money from customers and using that money to fund their manufacturing. That's much farther than Ferriss would have one go, although I think it might still barely be legal if I read the FTC rules correctly. (Which I'm sure I don't. Ask a real lawyer.)