freemium
"San Jose Mercury News: No One Reads Us Any More, So Let's Start Charging."
There's a lot of debate going on at present especially in the newspaper business about Google in particular, and bloggers in general, and whether they are "stealing" content. Newspapers are struggling, ad revenue is down, and they cannot survive as they are. But charging for content when they can't get enough visitors to read it for free seems perverse. There is an old marketing ploy about putting the price of a slow-selling product *up* and transforming it into a premium product that might then sell well. It's just that in this case news is a basic commodity which lots of other sites are also supplying. What makes this move particularly bone-headed is that Google are not the problem, they are driving traffic to the newspaper site.
Link to original article: http://griff.in/l
"Just Because You Offer A Free Service, It Doesn't Mean Your Users Aren't Customers."
There's a body of opinion that if you are using a service for free, you can't expect to be treated like a paying customer. That's wrong. There is plenty of debate around about why that's so, but all I wish to say here is that if you have some service you offer for free and you treat those who use it as anything less than valued customers, they never will become paying customers. If it carries your brand name, it should live up to everything that your brand stands for.
Link to original article: http://griff.in/k
