

A new kind of freemium: Give away the whole, sell the pieces - mitrca
http://statsheet.com/blog/a-new-kind-of-freemium-give-away-the-whole-sell-the-pieces

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coderdude
He lets you access the sports stats on his site for free, but he charges for
the ability to embed stats in your site. I just wanted to get that out in case
you saw the "new" in the title and got excited.

Edit: I just know someone is going to ask for an example,
<http://www.ibegin.com>

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_delirium
Hmm yeah, I think after reading it, I'd describe it as more: let people browse
the website for free, but sell access to the API.

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mitrca
But I'm not selling access to an API. I'm selling exactly the kind of data and
content found on the site.

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coderdude
Yes, but that is your implementation of the freemium model. There are other
sites, including my example, that allow free access to their data on the site,
but then sell the data (in one form or another). You use embedded stats,
iBegin uses datasets, other companies might charge for their API.

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mitrca
You are highlighting how my example is different from the others :-)

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coderdude
I'm actually highlighting how your business model is just a single execution
of a broader method of conducting business. However, in the sense that your
end product differs from the other examples, yes. If you really want it that
bad.

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seldo
The main app is free (and he plans to sell advertising on it later) but
downstream services (like an off-site widget) are premium. That's a successful
business model to be sure, but hardly novel.

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mitrca
That's a much more generic description of the model. I'm talking about a
specific type of "main app" and a specific type of "downstream service"

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cullenking
We recently started to branch in this direction as well, however, it was
rather inadvertent. A much larger website was interested in having our
planning features from <http://ridewithgps.com> on their site, but didn't want
to budget their own coders to implement it. We are in the process of
negotiating a contract, which is turning out to be fairly lucrative for our
small startup.

So, this works both large and small; just like Google Maps, you can give away
some bits for free but if anyone wants to use your product in a way that will
financially benefit them, they kick you a license fee.

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alttab
This is similar to the revenue model of Spiceworks. It is a free application
available to download, but besides just ad revenue it also sells out (gets
'sponsors') for features added via their plugin architecture.

They are basically selling out portions of their functionality work flow to
advertisers and giving away the application as a platform.

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Slashed
I don't see anything _new_ here.

Actually, it reminded me of an example from an audiobook I listened to a few
months ago about the Freemium model.

There was an example of one of the first Gillette's marketing campaigns.
Basically, they gave away blades for free but to use them you had to buy a
razor.

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mitrca
That example is definitely not similar to the StatSheet model. I'm talking
about selling pieces of a free web site. You can't use the razor without
buying the blades.

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dannyr
Does your sports data provider get a cut from this? It looks like you are
reselling their data.

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wmeredith
Uh, how is this new? Kodak used to give away cameras so you'd buy film.

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unexpected
mitrca,

off-topic, but i'm having trouble building a chart on your site, and was
wondering if it's even possible:

Your site is great at showing season long stats, but what if I want to show
specific opponents.

This week, for example, is the Duke-UNC game. Is there a way to trend stats
specific just for Duke vs. UNC?

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aresant
Interesting to think of software-as-a-service similar to the "virtual goods"
model economies growing in mobile, social, etc. . .

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teej
I think it's worth noting that games, which have driven the virtual goods
business model, are essentially software as a service. The value you receive
from the service is entertainment.

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Subgun
What prevents someone from doing a screen capture or content scrape of your
data and posting it to their website?

Are you geared up to start sending out cease and desist notices to every chump
with a myspace account who happens to like sports and knows how to use pbrush
and ALT+Print Screen.

Good luck but it seems too easily to rape your content and leave you holding
the legal bill for a fight you can't win.

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Subgun
I'm not attacking every freemium model out there.. just one that involves
sports that have a large percentage of fanatic fans and their favorite teams
stats . Other models don't have the same potential for copyright violation.

The idea and technology being used is great I just think there may be an
enormous legal battle ahead should the site and service become very popular.

