Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s editor in chief, follows a trend in media these days whereby media no longer interviews an expert, but becomes the expert. Despite this I still tuned in yesterday for a synopsis of his new book “Free” which you can relive here.
As heavy users of 37signals products we’ve been on the consumer end of a freemium business model. We first signed up for free Highrise and free Basecamp. We experimented with free BackPack before dropping it at no cost. Now we pay for Highrise and Basecamp as do several hundred thousand others at about $50 a month. Read more about this business approach here.
But what about the services industry…
Without software or packaged goods to sell what do we give away for free. Would you, our customer, commit to spending dollars or euros with us down the road after we give you “X”. Other than this blog and a couple tweets per day we don’t really have freebies out there. To be honest, I’m not sure we have a clue. Can the freemium business model work in the services industry? What should we give away?
Any advice? via Comment or Twitter @wefightboredom
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