Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

Below is my first ever guest post written by Peter Froberg of the Freemium blog. 

Thanks to Peter and enjoy!

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I recently came across the post here on Conscious images about freemium.

Once I read a few posts on this blog it seems like there is a large connection between the subjects of the blog in general and the freemium business model.

The idea behind this blog is that the social web “undresses” companies. So in order to look good, you have to be good. Freemium creates the same effect with products. Your product gets promoted and shared only if it is good.

The freemium model is about giving a quality product away for free, and then selling complementary products to the free users.

If I set up a record label with a freemium business model, I will give away the MP3 files. The revenue would be created from selling concerts, deluxe product and t-shirts. This model will only make money for me if the free product is good. If my music is bad, people won’t buy anything; but if it is good more people will have a chance to hear it.

Not just a free test.

Freemium creates a situation where knowledge, software and culture are evaluated on their own individual merits. But it is not just to give people a look under the hood. It gives everyone the chance to benefit from it – even those who will pay nothing.

If done correctly it can thus be a chance for you to let a lot more people have the benefit of the brilliant things you create, while you are making more money.

For more about this, you can check out my freemium blog.

Best

Peter Froberg

Tags: Freemium
Posted in Freemium | No Comments »

I first heard the term freemium in a talk by Gary Vaynerchuk of the very successful Wine Library TV. The concept is simple: give away some stuff for free and sell premium stuff. It’s what Wired editor Chris Anderson’s upcoming book Free is all about. Vaynerchuk does it by offering great wine advice in his videocast for free and selling wine.

This week I heard about two more very different freemium examples. The Guardian newspaper, always on the cutting edge of great thought, is now also on the freemium cutting edge. The paper recently announced it’s making all its content available for free via a system similar to the iPhone in terms of letting people create applications using Guardian content. For example, someone could create an application that takes all the Guardian stories on international crime and mashes them up with Google Maps to create a map of international crime centres. The money part is the Guardian will eventually require people to carry ads from the Guardian’s adverstising clients. It’s a brilliant way to spread the Guardian’s content far and wide – and keep monetizing it.

The other example is the mashup music artist Girl Talk who I wrote about in a recent post about the movie Rip: A Remix Manifesto. Like the innovative British band, Radiohead, Girl Talk’s album is available for download off Girl Talk’s MySpace page – for as much as you want to pay. The freemium is that if you pay a little more you get a little more.  Any price grants the download of the entire album as high-quality mp3s, $5 or more adds the options of FLAC files , plus a one-file seamless mix of the album and $10 or more includes all of the above plus a packaged CD when available.

Freemiums are the future. Will you or your competitors get there first?

Posted in Freemium, Music, Newspapers | 3 Comments »