Business model - Freemium - Examples - Dropbox
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Quick Disclaimer: I don't work for Dropbox and don't know anybody that does. I have no inside knowledge, but just based on my following them and putting things together, this is my interpretation of how they are printing money. Dropbox stores only 1 copy of every unique file and serves everybody the same unique file - provided that it is the exact file - but charges everybody for the full file size. E.g. if 1 person uploads a 5MB file, but 99 other people upload it too, they don't have 100 copies of that 5MB file for 500MB of storage.
How Dropbox is printing money
Don’t spend money on marketing, do offer flexibility and data exporting to eliminate buyers’ regret, make sure to capitalize on and value goodwill, and only charge for things that are hard to do. That’s what some startups say is the key to success in the freemium business. But the biggest reason the five presenters this morning at the Freemium Summit in San Francisco — Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic (see disclosure at the bottom) and MailChimp — are doing well is because they have great products that people want. They’ve been able to get those products to a broad audience by using the freemium model — that is, offering a free service with the option to upgrade. It’s an increasingly important business model, but one that’s hard to navigate, so their anecdotes, open sharing of data, and lessons learned were really valuable.
