They're trying to get a conversion to something free, which has an order of magnitude or two easier than getting a conversion to something paid. The typical offer in the deals industry is "Sign up for our free emails for deep discounts." You can get 33% conversion to that if you're pitching something to a fresh audience which doesn't have deal fatigue. (Quick comparable: BCC landing pages convert at 40%+ for some sources of traffic. I know a guy who pities my terrible stats.)
The business model is then "Most people don't buy anything and have LTV of $0, some people buy one thing, and a fraction of people make a habit of buying from you. You optimize such that the people who buy stuff subsidize cost of customer acquisition for everyone else and then some, then scale like crazy while keeping an eye on those metrics.")
See also AppSumo / Groupon / etc. This is why they're all very aggressive about getting email signups: this space runs on email.
The business model is then "Most people don't buy anything and have LTV of $0, some people buy one thing, and a fraction of people make a habit of buying from you. You optimize such that the people who buy stuff subsidize cost of customer acquisition for everyone else and then some, then scale like crazy while keeping an eye on those metrics.")
See also AppSumo / Groupon / etc. This is why they're all very aggressive about getting email signups: this space runs on email.