That Free Thing Review and History

That Free Thing no longer appears to be active as a direct sales company.

That Free Thing is no longer active as a network-marketing company or business opportunity. The company launched in 2011 around a paid membership that provided access to free-product offers, coupons, samples, and other promotional deals gathered from third-party companies.

Original Npros business profile for That Free Thing, preserved below for archival purposes:

That Free Thing was founded by Seth Fraser and Matt Goettsche and operated from the Denver, Colorado area. Fraser had previously founded Freebie Force, an earlier MLM built around a similar free-product membership concept. That Free Thing entered pre-launch in early 2011 and marketed itself as a centralized source for free food, merchandise, travel offers, entertainment, samples, coupons, and other promotional giveaways available on the Internet. Members received access to the company's freebie portal and alerts for newly available offers.

The company used a 3-by-8 forced-matrix compensation plan built around paid memberships. Enrollment cost $25 followed by a $9.95 monthly fee. Representatives earned percentages of enrollment and monthly membership fees generated by people placed throughout their eight-level matrix, including members placed through spillover from other representatives. A completely filled matrix contained 9,840 positions and was promoted as producing $18,201 from enrollment fees and $7,280.40 in recurring monthly commissions. The plan also included matching bonuses tied to the activity of personally sponsored representatives.

The underlying membership did not provide proprietary merchandise. That Free Thing collected and organized promotional offers already available from companies and websites and presented them to members through its own platform. This made the recurring membership itself the principal product supporting the compensation system. The company expanded rapidly during its initial launch period, but member retention became a problem as the original freebie model matured.

That Free Thing tried several additional business concepts in an effort to broaden its revenue base. In October 2011 it introduced a Vendor Network built around local deals and merchant offers. In 2012 it added Blog Network, a $19.95-per-month blogging and web-hosting program with its own 2-by-14 matrix compensation structure. That Free Thing also partnered with WakeUpNow in 2012, giving its members access to another MLM product and compensation platform. Co-founder Matt Goettsche acknowledged at the time that the original roughly $10-per-month membership did not generate enough income for the average representative to make building the organization worthwhile.

That Free Thing ultimately disappeared from the network-marketing market. By August 2013, Seth Fraser had moved on to another MLM venture, Uneeqlee, and That Free Thing was described as a failed prior operation. The original thatfreething.com website is no longer functioning as a membership portal or MLM opportunity, and the domain currently has no active mail or DNS infrastructure.