Isn’t there a relation between FREE and less value? If you give it away for FREE do you devalue your product/service?

We speak to so many business every day, and so many of those conversations include “yes, but I haven’t got any £ to spend on the web site”. Why not? Why is there a perception that you can have a great effective web site for free? No one expects the accountant to work for free? No one expects to get 1000 brochures printed for free?
But if your website brings in (or should/could bring in) a large proportion of your business why shouldn’t you invest in it? If you know you make £xx on a sale, shouldn’t you be willing to pay £yy to improve the site in order to improve business? In the off line world you pay to improve your business all the time, it is never FREE to generate a customer or make the phone ring?
Of course no SME can pay thousands for a web site, but shouldn’t they perhaps accept to pay a little bit for buying in expert development help ever so often?

 We have previously run events about Google Analytics, an excellent FREE tool to measure your web site stats. Everyone installs Analytics, sits back and doesn’t do much more. How about if you were paying £200 a year for the service, wouldn’t you make the most of it?!
The same applies for Web masters tool, use it like you had paid for it!

Your web site is your biggest opportunity out there; can you really afford not to invest a little bit in it?