How to Make the Freemium Model Work

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The last few years have seen a revolution in terms of online marketing. The rise of new, disruptive technologies such as peer to peer and social media have led to a fundamental shift on how business is done. A model that emerged as a possible answer to these problems is the Freemium paradigm. In essence it relies on gathering a large following and then trying to capitalize on it with low yield methods. Its adepts claim that the high volume will make up for the relatively low profit margin.

Promising as it sounds, this model has lead to multiple business failures. However, there are success stories as well. It’s obvious that the Freemium model CAN work, but only if you know what you’re doing. [Read more…]

Chris Anderson’s Free! Borrows From Wikipedia

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Wired editor Chris Anderson is soon to launch his latest book/theory, following up on The Long Tail, titled Free!. There’s definitely nothing wrong with his ideas if you ask me, and you can read them for yourself on Wired, but the book seems a bit, well rushed perhaps?

First there was the WordPress incident, where Anderson probably was making the famous wordpress.org/wordpress.com mixup. He should know better, and a technical reviewer should have caught that.

Now there’s copy-pasting from Wikipedia.

Fast Company found the Virginia Quarterly Review blog post detailing how Anderson copy-pasted an entry from the Free lunch entry on Wikipedia, and illustrates it with side by side comparisons. Just look at all that yellow text marking the similarities! [Read more…]

Chris Anderson Doesn’t Get WordPress

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I’m a big fan of Chris Anderson, the Wired editor and The Long Tail author. His most recent book is Free!, due anytime soon (for free in some versions, paid in others), and it is all about content online. I especially like his thoughts on freemium, free+premium that is, being what Flickr does with paid pro accounts that more or less makes the service free for non-paying users.

But he doesn’t get WordPress. At least not if this tip sent to WordPress developer Mark Jaquith is true. [Read more…]

This Is How Twitter Suggested Users Work, And Freemium Is The Business Model

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Biz Stone writes about how Twitter picks its suggested users. Basically, it’s a search for “potentially interesting Twitter accounts” users and then they pick a few. This has been puzzling people for some time, so there you have it. Naturally, it hit Techmeme…

The most interesting part of the blog post is the last paragraph, however:

So, that’s how we’re doing the list today. We may very well change the way we populate this list or stop using it altogether if there is some other way to get the job done.

Keeping all the doors open, are we?

In other Twitter news, Biz Stone confirms pro accounts, but nothing’s been decided as to how these will work. It is a freemium model, so Twitter will remain free for all.