Marcel Weiss's Library tagged freeconomics → View Popular

07 Apr 09

This is a key point that is often overlooked by those who slam the concept of free and assume that it can't happen or it can't work. They overlook how free is a part of a larger economic transaction that actually does increase overall utility and economic growth

26 Mar 09

Es gibt einen Grund, warum viele Angebote im Internet kostenlos angeboten werden. Dieser Grund ist allerdings nicht eine vermeintliche “Gratis-Mentalität” oder ein Aufkommen einer herbeigeschriebenen “Generation kostenlos”. Der Grund liegt in den ökonomischen Gegebenheiten und Dynamiken des Webs.

02 Mar 09

In 1999, best-selling author Paulo Coelho, who wrote "The Alchemist," was failing in Russia. That year he sold only about 1,000 books, and his Russian publisher dropped him. But after he found another, Coelho took a radical step. On his own Web site, launched in 1996, he posted a digital Russian copy of "The Alchemist."
With no additional promotion, print sales picked up immediately. Within a year he sold 10,000 copies; the next year around 100,000. By 2002 he was selling a total of a million copies of multiple titles. Today, Coelho's sales in Russian are over 10 million and growing. "I'm convinced it was putting it up for free on the Internet that made the difference," he said in an interview at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos.

03 Jan 09

05 Dec 08

30 Nov 08

Value is only one component of price, playing into the demand part of the equation. But, price isn't determined by demand alone. It's the intersection of supply and demand -- and if supply is infinite, then pricing pressure will drive the price to zero. That does not mean the content has no value. It can be very valuable. But that doesn't change what the price is going to be for one simple reason: some competitors will figure out how to exploit the infinite nature of the content as free, and other will find it difficult to keep up unless they do the same.