Order free swatches - how should I set this up?

I want to offer my customers free swatches with free shipping directly from the page where the product is listed for sale. I thought of adding this as an attribute priced at $0, but I can't get around the shipping charges and when they add the swatch to their cart it reduces the actual number of items I have for sale.

I then thought of modifying the ask a question about this product form, but this would mean that the customer would have to input their address for every swatch ordered.

My current swatch set up is its own product with six blank text boxes for swatch names, but my customers are complaining they have to remember the fabric names and manually fill in the boxes (plus half the time they get the swatch names wrong and it makes a big mess).

Does anyone know of a way to offer free swatches from the page where the item is listed for sale?

You might look at the cross sell module in the downloads section and set the swatch for the item as a cross sell item in this way the stock for the swatch will be adjusted and you can maintain this at a high level and add more if needed.

It will be free and the shipping can be by passed I believe by setting in your admin > configuration > Shipping/Packaging > Order Free Shipping 0 Weight Status and set to '1'. Also set the swatch to zero weight and zero price

This might get you what you want

That's a terrific idea! Thanks so much - I'm off to try it out :)

If the cross-sell idea doesn't work out, you could improve the functionality of your existing swatch order setup.

Instead of textboxes to enter names, you could make a "Swatch" attribute (in Option Names) and give it values of all the different fabric names (in Option Values). Then make a checkbox attribute (in Attribute Controller) and customers can select what they want from a list - no misspellings!

This should work well as long as you don't have "too many" fabrics to choose from.