Throw a Price Tag on it!
Somewhere along the line web businesses lost the price tag on their product or service.
Businesses started handing our their service and products for free hoping eventually it would go viral. They could then charge for a premium price or upsell them onto another product.
I am starting to think this is the wrong way to go about it. Start charging from day one - build up some capital, use it to expand and grow.
There is a reason why Amazon and eBay are making a ton of money. There are scripts available for people to start their own auction website like eBay so why hasn’t anyone created a platform where sellers could list their products for free? I am sure a lot of people have, unfortunately they can not survive because the cost eventually out weighs the revenue keeping it free.
What do you think - can you make money by offering a free service and hoping the money eventually comes in or do you start charging right away?
April 24th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Pricing right and Free are different models. Imagine what would be business if Google or Yahoo started charging their customers (users)!!!. A business model is likely to succeed if it is free for consumers and cost for businesses.
In my opinion, Free basic services and Pay for Premium services will be best option for most cases. Amazon and Ebay are selling goods, so hard to offer free services. Though there are some free auction/classified sites competing with Ebay. Ebay normally buys them keeping their monopoly.
April 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I should have thought more about the Google case. But I wonder what happens if they would have charged for specialized search at first then gone the free model.
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