Editor’s Note: The Grind is a weekly column that asks a revolving cast of young founders to take us through the daily rigors of running a business, as well as offer up advice on how they achieved milestones or overcame challenges. Follow The Grind on Twitter with the hashtag .

As the founder of skincare line S.W. Basics, I receive dozens of emails from companies asking for free samples. I have heard every reason in the book as to why they need to get their hands on these samples — reviews, giveaways, subscription boxes, events and daily deals. As they put it, participating would help us drive in traffic, boost sales, increasing fans organically and could be done all for free.

True that all these perks are great publicity, and in a saturated market, any exposure is good exposure. It can be incredibly difficult to get your product in front of new customers and even more difficult to get to the right market of people.

Related: Marketing Like the Big Brands: Think You Know Your Customer? Think Again.

And the people and companies vying for samples know this, putting them in a position of power. Want access to their networks? It’s going to cost you. They can call it free all they want, but when you’re giving out product, it is as if you are paying them.

Plus, samples often won’t even cut it. They want full-sized items, as they would appear on a shelf in a store. This means not only are you losing the money it cost you to make the item, you’re also losing the potential sale altogether. If you make an item that sells at $ 30 and they’d like 4000 of them, do the math — it’s a lot of money. And that quantity isn’t even on the high-end — there are subscription boxes like Birchbox and Glossybox with hundreds of thousands of members.

Recently, I was describing my predicament with a fellow entrepreneur. She said she no longer sends free products out to anyone, ever. This includes wholesalers, potential new accounts, and stores. She’s been burned so many times by people saying they are interested and then disappearing after a bunch of free products were given to them, she now requests they purchase samples through her site.

Related: The Future of the Subscription Economy

I understand where she’s coming from, yet I am torn if this is the route I should also take. It’s tricky. In an era where customers can shop virtually anywhere for 50 percent off if they wait for the right deal or get endless samples at their doorsteps for $ 10 a month, should I be giving in these demands?

Until I figure that out, I’ve made a few rules for myself:

• Is it exactly my target market with absolutely no compromises?
• Have I heard of it before?
• Are they willing to pay to cover any of my costs?
• Do I like the person pitching me the idea?

For now, at least, it’s all about the little compromises.

To follow the ups-and-downs of running a startup, check out The Grind.

How would you handle the issue of freebies? Let us know in the comments below.

Wish the National League had won this week’s All-Star Game? You don’t need to wait for next season for a rematch.

Thanks to an exemption from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, fantasy sports businesses can be a good bet for entrepreneurs. Participation among users has surged more than 60 percent since 2007, and more than 32 million people aged 12 and older play in the U.S. and Canada, according to research conducted in 2012 by Ipsos Public Affairs for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

One of the newest companies on the scene is Star Fantasy Leagues, or SFL, in Rochester, N.Y. This particular company was founded by brothers Zachary (age 26) and Justin (age 31) Stanley in the summer of 2012.

To get their perspective on starting up in the mad-cap world of fantasy sports, we recently caught up with Zachary to talk shop. Here’s what he had to say about the marketplace, the business model and what makes SFL stand out:

Q: There are a lot of fantasy sports companies out there today. What makes yours different?
A: We offer cash games like the rest of them, but we’re really focused on innovation. The best example of this is our program, Star Points. These points act like credits and allow our players to play cash games for free. They can exchange the Star Points for a chance to win prizes or buy tickets to various tournaments.

Related: Marketing Lessons From This Summer’s Blockbuster Movies 

Q: How and when did you get the business started?
A: My brother Justin and I started the company in 2012. We’ve been playing fantasy sports since it has been available on the internet. Once daily games started popping up, we were playing those, as well. There were things about the sites we played that we didn’t really like. They catered less to players and more to dollar signs. We always hoped that we could create a site ourselves. When our dad died of lung cancer, he left us a bunch of money and we started the company with just over $ 400,000.

Q: Can you give us a status report on how the company is doing? For instance, how many games are you running each day and how many members or users do you have?
A: Right now we have about 3,000 members and about 30 games daily. We offer cash games ranging from $ 1 and $ 2 up to $ 400, and currently we offer games in all major sports: baseball, football, basketball and hockey.

Related: This Startup Wants to Revolutionize Search, One Data Set at a Time 

Q: So how does it work?
A: Most of our games have no more than 20 players apiece. Some of our games pay out to the first and second place finishers only. In others — we call them “double-ups” — the top 50 percent of players double their money and don’t have to worry about where they place. We also offered featured games that deal with higher levels of entry volume. Eventually we’ll want those to be in the hundreds of entries for each game.

Q: How do you make money?
A: We make a small percentage off of each game. Kind of like a rake in a card room. Our $ 22 heads-up game pays up $ 40 to the winner, and we get $ 4 out of that game. It’s all scaled. The more people we have playing, the more revenue we have coming in. We don’t currently have ads on the site and we don’t have plans to incorporate them any time soon.

Q: How much knowledge of a particular sport is required of users to participate?
A: Keeping your skills sharp is critical to long-term results, as the more you prepare, the better you’re likely going to do. That said, at some point historical knowledge becomes relatively unimportant as users competing on a day-to-day basis look at every trend they can to get an edge. If you know the game, do the research and develop a strategy, you should be able to compete.

Related: If I Knew Then: CEO of KIND Healthy Snacks Dishes on Lessons Learned During His First Years as an Entrepreneur 

Q: Realistically, how much money can a user earn from participating in these games?
A: It’s been nearly a year since we first opened our proverbial doors, and our top earner has won more than $ 11,000. Our top earner for the month of March brought in more than $ 3,500, with the top 10 players for that month earning more than $ 1,000 each.

Q: What are the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs in your space seem to make?
A: Most of the companies in our space do the same exact thing. I think that’s a really poor business model, and I think it’s creating a bad name for the industry as a whole. We’re trying to do something different by innovating around the currency that members use on the site and adding Star Points. It turns out this is a huge differentiator.

Q: What’s next for Star Fantasy Leagues?
A: Because we’re committed to innovation, we’re working on a new style of game. I can’t talk much about it, but the game incorporates aspects of daily and season-long contests. We think it’s going to be big. We’re hoping to launch it for football season this fall.

Big brand marketing and summer blockbuster movies have gone hand-in-hand for years now from Ray-Ban sunglasses in Men In Black to Disney characters printed on cereal boxes — but this season feels different. Brand and movie partnership marketing seems more integrated than ever before.

Such partnerships have gone way beyond using products as props or including film characters on packaging. This summer, movies and the businesses they partner with have become inextricably linked, engaging the consumer in breakthrough ways. In many cases, brands are taking on the personalities of the movies, actually enacting the ethos of the films in their marketing and product experiences. At the same time, brands are being woven into scripts as vital characters of their own.

Any business of any size can take a lesson here in how to engage consumers through partnership marketing. Regardless of your brand, joining forces with a partner in your marketing efforts can be a powerful way to get the word out about your business and attract new customers.

Here are three summer blockbuster movies that have incorporated a three-dimensional approach to brand partnerships, using different marketing vehicles, where the movie, the brand and the consumer all come out winners:

Monster University and Swiffer. In this Pixar film, which comes out in 3D on June 21, the characters actually demonstrate how the house cleaning product works, referring to its “monster job of cleaning.” This messaging is echoed in Swiffer commercials that feature the movie’s characters making a big mess and cleaning it up with the tagline — “Swiffer gives cleaning a monstrous new meaning.” The result is a marketing campaign that seamlessly combines the product and characters in consumers’ minds.

Your strategy: Don’t be afraid to show a little personality in your marketing. It’ll help you break through the clutter of marketing messages that your customers receive on a daily basis. When working with a partner, try to leverage both personalities for an amplified effect. But always make sure you tie it back to your brand’s benefits.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Kiehl’s. While this movie isn’t coming out in theaters until April 2014, Marvel Comics, which is putting out the film with Disney, has already started their unconventional marketing strategy with the skin and hair care brand, Kiehl’s. Not only are Kiehl’s retail stores decorated with signage and product displays featuring the characters, Marvel recently came out with a custom-made Captain America comic book specifically set inside a Kiehl’s shop. The comic book recently ran as an insert in the Wall Street Journal and was offered to customers when they made a purchase in-store or online.

Your strategy: Think about ways you and your partner can build hype around your partnership. Can you create unique stand-alone products that add value to your consumer? You want to surprise and delight customers, planning well in advance to build suspense.

Iron Man 3 and Audi. Here’s another superhero film that came out in May that takes an innovative approach to brand partnerships. Public relations and product integration hit all new heights in this sequel, where there was a lot of hype in the entertainment and pop culture press about which car the film’s hero, Tony Stark would be driving.

The partnership allowed Audi to align its new R8 model with the film’s protagonist, who adapts his superpowers to the changing world around him. The movie’s star, Robert Downey Jr. showed up at the U.S. premier in Los Angeles behind the wheel of the same red 2014 Audi R8 Spyder that he drove in the film, taking product placement from the screen to the real-world.

Your strategy: When entering into partnership marketing, think hard about how you can create ways for the two brands to not only co-exist in the minds of your customers, but to enhance one another. What does your partner bring to the table that you need more of and conversely, what can you offer them?

While you might not have a blockbuster movie-bound brand, the lesson here is that really good partner marketing is always three-dimensional, offering consumers an experience neither partner could deliver alone.

Editor’s Note: YoungEntrepreneur’s Ask the Expert column seeks to answer questions about everything from starting a business to growing one. To follow the column on Twitter — and ask a question — use hashtag , or leave a comment below. Your query may be the inspiration for a future column.

Q: Why is a company’s pre-money valuation important to investors? How is it determined, and what other factors should investors consider? Are there online tools that would assist in calculating my venture’s valuation?
-anonymous

A: I find settling on a valuation to be one of the top challenges young entrepreneurs face today. Before I tackle the question, let’s examine what valuation is and how it works.

A company’s pre-money valuation, or PMV, is its estimated value immediately prior to accepting funding. Every time entrepreneurs seek to sell ownership in their company in exchange for financing, they must figure out PMV. It determines how much ownership existing shareholders or members will give investors in exchange for financing.

Here’s an example: Say you want to raise $ 1 million in financing. If you place a PMV of $ 1 million on your startup, then investors would receive 50 percent ownership and the company would forgo 50 percent. If the PMV was instead $ 3 million but you still only needed to raise $ 1 million, investors would only receive 25 percent ownership in the company and existing shareholders would give up only 25 percent.

In determining the PMV, I often see entrepreneurs spend a lot of time developing financial projections to which they apply the discounted cash-flow method. This approach is meaningless for early-stage companies because the projections are usually inaccurate and unreliable.

Instead, an entrepreneur should turn to the angel community, as they have developed methods that are respected and commonly used. You can find some of these methods in the valuation section of angel investor Bill Payne’s blog. Most angel investors will recommend using a blend of methods rather than relying on one method. Also, if possible, find out what companies with PMVs similar to yours have successfully raised funds.

Related: How to Raise Real Cash for Your Startup

Keep in mind that, when deciding PMV, entrepreneurs and investors tend to have opposite estimates. Existing owners are motivated to have a high PMV, because they will suffer less dilution. Investors are motivated to have a low PMV, because they want to maximize the amount of ownership they receive in exchange for their funding.

Interestingly, many entrepreneurs choose to forgo the entire research process and place a PMV on their company simply by deciding how much of the company they are willing to give up in exchange for the funding they seek. This approach can lead to an unrealistic PMV, which sends a message to investors that you are unprepared.

As for online tools, some free or inexpensive spreadsheets exist, but they generally are too simplistic and employ a single-valuation method. There are some high-priced consultants, but they tend to charge more than entrepreneurs can afford.

Related: 8 Keys to Sizing Your Startup Funding Requirement

My partner and I are developing a web-based tool that will collect an entrepreneur’s answers to more than 70 questions and apply to them a blend of the valuation methods angel investors most commonly use plus factor in valuation comparables. This will help entrepreneurs create a defensible PMV, intended to withstand scrutiny by angel investors. Feel free to visit www.worthworm.com to register for the public beta if you’d like to test it out.

While PMV is important to investors, they also look at other factors like the quality and completeness of the management team, the size of the market you are targeting, whether you would have a sustainable advantage over competitors, scalability and customer-acquisition costs. This is not an exhaustive list, but it will give you a flavor for some of the key issues investors would explore.

Have a question for YE’s experts? Submit your questions in the comments section below and those with the most likes from other readers will be answered. On Twitter, use the hashtag . Include your first and last name, your location (city and state) and the name of your business.

Coming up with new ways to reach customers on Twitter doesn’t need to require a lot of time or money. What it does take is creativity and a willingness to make personal connections.

Here are five keys to energizing your Twitter strategy to reach customers in new and innovative ways:

1. Shred the script.

In April, when Maureen Johnson was stuck in the airport because of a delayed United Airlines flight, she expressed her frustration in a that she photographed and tweeted out. Johnson, a young-adult novelist, has more than 80,600 followers on Twitter, so the image reached a lot of eyeballs. United responded with a doodle  of its own including the hand-scrawled hashtags “#wedontlikedelayseither” and “#wheelsupsoon.”

The personal touch surprised Johnson who responded with a “whoa,” and generated buzz from others. “You try to meet people with what they give you,” says Shanna Quinn, senior marketing representative for social media programs at United Airlines, who created the tweet. “I just took out a pen and paper and started doodling.”

What you can do: Encourage employees to tweet with their own personal voice rather than taking on a scripted tone — a strategy Peter Shankman, founder of the New York-based consulting firm Shankman/Honig and author of (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) calls “shredding the scripts.”

2. Connect offline.

In March, when Jen O’Neill, a marketing executive in New York, got the afternoon munchies, she sent out a tweet about how she could use a snack. Within an hour, a Pretzel Crisps truck was parked in front of her building, unloading enough freebie snacks to feed her 50-person office. Soon everyone at work was tweeting about the brand’s gesture. “When people are surprised on Twitter, they are going to tweet about it and that’s how things can spread very quickly,” says O’Neil’s boss, Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likable Local, and author of (McGraw-Hill, 2012).

What you can do: Set up alerts on keywords relevant to your business in specific geographic areas, suggests Jay Baer, author of the book (Portfolio Hardcover, 2013) and president of Convince & Convert, a Bloomington, Ind.-based social media strategy firm. Do this with tools such as Google Alerts, HootSuite or social media listening software mention.net and sysomos.com.

If you run a local car repair shop, for example, you can use monitter.com, a location-based search engine to follow keywords like “flat tire” or “car broke down” tweeted by people in your ZIP code, to come to their rescue, suggests Mack Collier, a social media strategist based in Florence, Ala., and author of (McGraw-Hill, 2013). It’s a great way to get people tweeting about your business.

3. Comment on current events.

When Mitt Romney mentioned Big Bird during the presidential debate last October, Mental Floss Magazine’s tweet, “Big Bird is 8’2”,” was re-tweeted 1,105 times. The brand uses the strategy of responding to events in the news and pop culture — from the to the to filing announcement — with related trivia to get people tweeting. By offering such factoids, they hope to spark shares and tweets without having to choose a political side, says co-founder Will Pearson.

What you can do: Tweeting about news and live events helps your brand stay current, but make sure you’re saying something original or you’ll get drowned in the noise. Worse, don’t use the news as a way to push your product or service. “Businesses fall under the trap of thinking every individual tweet has to drive some sort of transaction,” says Pearson. “Our Twitter feed should be a meaningful experience for our readers.” He suggests following a 90-10 ratio with 90 percent of your tweets offering stand-alone content and only 10 percent relating directly to your product or service.

4. Host events and guests.

In May, the alcohol brand Hpnotiq held a live Twitter chat in which socialite and reality-TV celebrity Khloé Kardashian Odom took charge of the brand’s Twitter account for an hour, answering questions tweeted by fans. The strategy helped build buzz around Hpnotiq’s upcoming contest and sweepstakes, connecting Kardashian fans directly with the brand.

What you can do: You don’t need a celebrity to take on this kind of strategy, says Kerpen. Even getting a thought leader in your industry could work, or just leveraging the chat space yourself to get customers talking.

5. Mix media.

In May, Dunkin’ Donuts launched a contest asking fans to create a six-second video through the video-sharing app Vine on how their iced coffee “put a spring in their step.” The winner got free iced coffee for a year. The idea was inspired by Vines that the company noticed fans putting up on their own, says Jessica Gioglio, who manages social media for Dunkin’ Brands, Inc. Since launching last month, the brand has put out six Vines, including one promoting their free doughnuts on National Doughnut Day.

What you can do: Making a six-second video with your smartphone doesn’t require a hefty budget. “I could create a Vine with a doughnut and cup of coffee in 10 seconds in my kitchen,” says Shankman. “More companies should do it.”

The goal is engaging customers with Vines that aren’t just entertaining, but also functional. The retail chain Lowe’s, for example, has a Vine campaign called “” offering six-second home-improvement solutions. “If you were a plumber in Pittsburg, you could create a whole series of household plumbing videos,” says Baer. “The most important asset you have in social is yourself. People want to follow people.”