Freemium
Overview
Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base. This business model has been around for a long time.
To start with, A VC view on what was not yet called "freemium" by Apr 24
This map is composed of 3 branches : 1) overview on the topic, 2) Key success factors for freemium and 3) real life numbers on pricing and convertion rates by Apr 24
The revenue side
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This pearl is my general point of view on freemium from a revenue side perspective. by Apr 22
This map includes 2 main branches. 1) posts on freemium, 2) data points on like convertion rates, price points. A small branch on recent social networks going for freemium by Apr 22
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The cost side
... but marginal cost needs to be taken into account by Mar 1
Diversity of freemium models
Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:46:19
The various freemium models. We often refer to number 2 (featured limited) in the web but there are actually others. Though I question thatsome of them are more a pure marketing technique rather than a endogenous sustainable business model (cf. marginal cost issue discussed earlier). by Mar 1
Which service could do it?
The tech world is an interesting one when it comes to companies making money. Some at the top like Microsoft, Apple and Google are raking in billions in profits every year. And each of those do it with different models: Microsoft through software, Apple through hardware and Google through advertising.
KSF of freemium
Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:46:19 “ Priced and Unpriced Online Markets ” by Harvard Business School professor Benjamin Edelman. Discusses tradeoffs in market such as email, IP addresses, search and dial-up Internet.
A deep dive on the necessity of scale for freemium to work by Mar 1
A year ago, the idea of free Web content was all the rage . Now the future of free is less clear.
Which price point ?
What is the right price point? Very difficult to know. Here are some interesting stats. by Mar 1
How to create a profitable Freemium startup (spreadsheet model i
5 key lessons to make it work
Today we have a fantastic guest blog from Ranjith Kumaran, on his adventure going from an ad-supported free service to a subscription-based freemium model.
Chris had a very interesting post on how does the web define authority .
Metrics to track with freemium
Case Studies in Freemium: Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic
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.Real life benchmarking on pricing and conversion rates
A deep dive on the conversation rate by Mar 1
Spotify 5% conversion
I’m here at the last keynote of SXSW, where Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is being interviewed by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk.Towards end of the interview, Spotify CEO says they have a 5% conversion rate to premium by Mar 17
10 million users have tuned in to Spotify so far, but only 1 out of 20 pays for it
Skype: 6.5% conversion at $96/year
A spat among professional networks: Class war | The Economist
Freemium conversion rates 1% for LinkedIn, 10% Viadeo, 18% Xing by Sep 28
Xing real figures
One of the best source of social web revenue and cost benchmarking: Xing - a european competitor of LinkedIn - is a public company so all reports are public... by Apr 24
Case study: AdultFriendFinder
An interesting case study with real numbers by Futuristic Play by Mar 1
though the site itself is not mainstream for most web entrepreneurs by Mar 1
SEC documents from Adult Friend Finder
The SEC document source of all hte numbers for those who want to make alternative analysis by Mar 1
There's Money to be Made in "Premium Privacy" Says VC Fred Wilson
Yep. Though it's a change of paradigm and it requires that the service started 100% public. It's interesting to see that while before "private" was sort of a requirement, now "public" is the norm and hence "private" could be monetized. by Jul 28
Monetize privacy... Sounds interesting... by Jul 23
This map is composed of 3 branches : 1) overview on the topic, 2) Key success factors for freemium and 3) real life numbers on pricing and convertion rates by wallen Apr 24