What VCs love about Skype, MySpace, and Flickr - October 1, 2006 - The Diigo Meta page

• 25 Oct 10
  

  Martti Paatela

  Check that your freemium model has at least these nine components.

  business model freemium

  • 1. Have a product or service that truly stands out. Its performance, ease of use, and reliability should be superior to those of current offerings.
  • 2. Know your upselling plan from the beginning. Before you even go into beta, make sure you have at least one paid, add-on premium service up your sleeve.
  • 3. Once you've decided that a product will be given away for free, don't change your mind.
  • If you make changes, Ressi says, you risk alienating customers accustomed to getting your product for free.
  • 4. Access to your product should be just one click away. The fewer time-consuming plug-ins, downloads, and registration forms required, the better. Otherwise people may get bored or frustrated and abort.
  • 5. Make sure the major bugs have been exterminated. Your product can be in beta, Rimer says, but not "so much in beta that it doesn't work well."
  • 6. Harness the collective intelligence of your users. Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, says customer suggestions can help speed up product improvements or inspire ideas for premium services.
  • 7. Keep improving the product to give users more reasons to stick with it.
  • 8. Identify a range of revenue sources.
  • 9. Timing is everything. Make sure that revenue from your premium service soon covers the cost of your free service. Otherwise, cut your losses and move on to the next startup.

  8 more annotations...

• 24 Mar 08
  

  Marc Lijour

  Freemium business model

  article business free internet marketing social tips Web2.0 mt8216

• 01 Feb 08
  

  patrick andrews

  Freemium works because "you reduce the main stumbling blocks of product adoption," Rimer says. "Web-based users who don't have to pay for it will often start evangelizing the benefits to others."

  freemium startup

• 20 Nov 07
  

  david waxman

  vitaband bismodelvalidation

• 03 Aug 07
  

  Marcelo Negrini

  Once upon a time, in the bad old days of business, giving away a product without charge was unheard of. Sure, Estée Lauder gave samples to celebrities and Gillette sold its razors cheap and made money on the blades.

  imported Favorites ImportedBookmarks ITSocialNetwork freemium

• 12 Apr 07
  

  Darryl Collins

  freemium business startups skype free

• 18 Mar 07
  

  . .

  AlexIdeas .del

• 15 Mar 07
  

  mallipeddi

  Just learned a buzzword - "freemium"!

  delpress vc business model free

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