If you skip the first five to ten minutes about publishing and have the patience to listen to a half hour presentation, this talk by Tim O’Reilly on marketing by means of a free product, blogging and best practices for online business models is actualy quite interesting.
Bottom line in this talk: Free is good, but only if it drives customers or donors to a paid service or product and in the end brings in revenue!
In this talk, Tim O’Reilly does the math: just how many page views do you need to support an blog or website with advertising? How popular does your blog need to be? What percentage of customers who sample a free product end up paying for more? Which online business models produce revenue comparable to existing print models? How much will others need to grow to fill the gap?
Free is a strategy, not an endpoint. It’s time to stop wishful thinking and build business models that work.
From O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, New York City, NY, February 12, 2008.
Yoav