Free Thoughts on Freemium

Image by louisvolant via Flickr

- Ironically, “Freemium” success seems to heavily depend on high costs.  While it might be easy for an entrepreneur to enter a market or create value, it’s still costly to sustain Freemium w/no revenue long enough to realize the opportunity.  This cost is “astronomical”.  The proof? name the “other” google, facebook, twitter, craigslist.  You might come up with some, but they’re certainly not rolling off everyone else’s tongue.

Another way of putting it…

- “Freemium” has moved the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs.  You can all start, but you can’t finish.

But I think this can change.

- However, as this cost drops, so might the price.  At that point, Free might be too expensive.  Throw Open Standards into the mix.  Making it easier for services and networks to seamlessly connect and thereby eliminating the risk of users “moving”.

- “Freemium” seems to contract the time it takes to solidify the first mover’s advantage.  The first solid mover with freemium that is.

-  As for the NYT question.  At some point, if nothing changes, their brand and not the quality of their content will keep readers attention.


Related articles by Zemanta

• Freemium and Freeconomics (avc.com)
• Mark Cuban: Succeed By Free, Die By Free (paidcontent.org)
• I Believe Mark Cuban is Right (chrisbrogan.com)