

Selling for a profit is the new free - rokhayakebe
http://econsultancy.com/blog/3231-chris-anderson-reevaluates-the-economics-of-free

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patio11
I yield to no one in the category of "Charge money for value", but I have to
agree with Anderson on this one: Non-monetary value can still be turned into
money. Its not rocket science.

The simplest case for it is search engine rankings: people like linking to
free things. Accordingly, putting free things on your website gets you lot of
links. Links get you search engine rankings.

I segment my market into two slices: one which is likely to need my
application a lot more than they need their money, and one which is not. The
free stuff is designed to satisfy the "I'll keep my money" segment (and thus
get links from them) while piquing the interest of the "Please, SOMEBODY, help
me" segment. The paid software is worth its price (and then some -- I just
bumped prices by 20% and after seeing sales data I might do it again) to that
segment.

Github does this really well, too: we'll give you access for free if you're an
OSS project (ooh, look, you attract links in spades and don't care that your
source is public) and we'll charge for access for private repositories,
without which your boss would have a conniption fit if you are developing
commercial software.

There are other ways to do it to. Demonstrated expertise (free) leads to
perceived expertise (free) leads to consulting opportunities (decidedly
unfree). Demonstrated expertise (free) leads to perceived expertise (free)
leads to business opportunity (free) to improve your sale of widgets (unfree).
Demonstrated expertise (free) leads to perceived expertise (free) leads to
employment opportunity (unfree). etc.

~~~
TomOfTTB
You demonstrate a big reason why I hate these types of posts/conversations.
Realistically you have to create a business plan that meets your needs and
looks at your potential market to determine what will be free and what won't.
That isn't something that Chris Anderson, Drama 2.0, or anyone else online is
going to help much with because each situation is different.

So what's happening here is basically just arguing generalizations which have
little consequence in the real world.

