Is Free Really That Bad?
Being in Spain, I tend to get some of my favorite magazines a little late. Thanks to my Mom she’s sweet enough to send me them! But I got the October issue of Entrepreneur and in a short article titled Radicals & Visionaries by Joe Robinson (Can be found here) there are two very different and two very acceptable debates to the Free ideals of today’s entrepreneurs and Social Media visionaries.
This article actually makes me question the idea of offering 100% of your service for free. I surely understand the point offer a service that will give something to your target market; but what’s in it for you, personally, egotistically, monetarily, and importantly as a business.
Take Facebook and Twitter for example. Great websites, great popular services, but besides ads, they aren’t retuning a profit on their ever expanding investments. Let’s face it from an accounting and financial standpoint, they have little going for it.
Free…but the good stuff isn’t
As many companies have found this out and I believe it to be the optimal way to run an online business, or to market your company. Is by offering a service/product that is 100% as effective as the competition, but continue to offer a paid service that adds many many bonuses that cannot be offered by the competition for a cost of free-99. Why? Because if they can get free from anywhere else, why should they have to pay for yours?
Take E-Books for example; Offer a very well elaborated E-Book for everyone, entirely free no matter what. But at the same time why not offer a $.99 ebook with an extra features including say worksheets (for a financial E-Book)?
That’s just my take on the free debate. It’s not entirely bull if you know how to fnagle it for your benefit!
Image by alles-schlumpf
Posted via web from Greg’s posterous
