You're thinking entirely from the business side; how a business perceives its profit model. As a consumer, and thinking specifically to when I had less means:

You're thinking entirely from the business side; how a business perceives its profit model. As a consumer, and thinking specifically to when I had less means: perhaps wrongly, but I have an acute perception of the value of anything I purchase in terms of the work that actually goes into its production. I'll pay for a service if I'm not being scammed, if some real human effort went into producing it. If it's just a copy of something that was already produced, then there's nothing for me to pay for. Similarly, if it costs $x but "free if you tell 5 friends", suddenly the whole experience is cheapened. It's perfectly concievable that I could tell 5 "friends" and this has 0 effect on you. My mind starts to wander. Why should I pay more because I don't have 5 friends? Why should I pay more because I'm not willing to shill myself out and strain the relationships I have, to give you some cheap advertising? I consider the premise offensive, and I also see that maybe you don't need the $20 as much as I do. It's not a great way of thinking, but I think the onus is on the salesperson to have some respect for their clients and not smugly write them off as "stealers" when their storefront provided what might be perceived by those clients as a sales trick. shrug