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Steal This Slide: The Six Kinds of "Free"
In Wired 16.03, Chris Anderson penned an insightful article entitled "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business." In it, Anderson outlined six different ways that things can be "free" yet still create a viable business model.
Download this slide from Slideshare.
These six kinds of free are:
Freemium - Offer a limited-functionality free version of a product to encourage trial, and have a purchasable premium version available for power users, a term coined by Fred Wilson
Advertising - Offer a free service to end users, and sell advertising to advertisers
Cross subsidies - Give the razor away free, and charge for the razor blades
Zero marginal cost - Products such as podcasts and digital music effectively incur a zero marginal cost to "ship" each unit
Labor exchange - Access to the information on a site is free as long as individuals contribute to the content of the site, like Yahoo Answers or Digg
Gift economy - Items are given away at zero cost, Freecycle is a good example
Related: Doc Searls is putting together a panel on free at SXSW09 entitled "Rebuilding the World with Free Everything." Check it out.
Data credit: Wired Magazine
Razor: derek
Gift: grobleto
August 12, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
Thanks for posting this Chris. It's a brilliant list, I wonder if there are more types of free.
Several of the frees listed there are more about attention. The way people can leverage free to spread ideas and then capitalise upon that attention later.
Great work. I can't wait to read the book.
Posted by: Richard Millington | Aug 13, 2008 9:55:41 AM
