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Clearly freemium has success cases. But I honestly am hesitant to commit to this advice myself. The kind of people one attracts with "free" are people that wan

by apsurd 17y ago

Clearly freemium has success cases. But I honestly am hesitant to commit to this advice myself. The kind of people one attracts with "free" are people that want stuff for free. Are these customers really the best use of your resources? My friend constantly tells me to open-source my project, "free attracts, free attracts" he says. Attracts what? People that are willing to spend vast amounts of time and effort to get out of paying a company like 37 signals to just "get it done". Obviously there are profitable fremium models, but don't you think its an uphill battle? Do I really want to process 1million customers, so that 1,000 actually pay? As you might expect, I am a DHH fan. I just thought I'd open the discussion on the side of being wary to committing to free.

patio11 17y ago
I suppose I'm now the moral equivalent of a freemium service. There is a free trial available. I never disparage the goal of, ultimately, making my customers happy and in return accepting their money. There is a price staring you in the face from the moment you arrive at the front page. I think a lot of people sort of fall into freemium because they are hesitant about charging people money. Don't be. Don't chase after customers who don't pay money for stuff -- if you don't pay money for stuff, don't chase after yourself, find a niche which does pay money for stuff. Solve their problems. Get paid for it, like everyone else who solves their problems. Incidentally, I sort of like OSS for being a friend catcher in the support of a paid-for project. (Note that this is very different from the usual "We'll OSS it and then create a premium version of the same thing, then viciously compete against ourselves for customers and mindshare" strategy.) [Edited to add: Incidentally, to get to ~2,000 paying customers I had to attract substantially in excess of 100k free trials, although the web version now converts much better (2.07% or so). Since they cost me essentially no marginal effort no marginal cost beyond advertising, I'm totally OK with that. If they were paying monthly I'd be sitting pretty!]
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
It seems odd to contrast 37signals against open source. They don't release all their software as open source, but they do a fair bit and seem to have generated a lot of PR out of it. If anything they're poster-boys for building both a business and a community by open sourcing elements further down their stack.

by apsurd 17y ago

patio11 17y ago

I suppose I'm now the moral equivalent of a freemium service. There is a free trial available. I never disparage the goal of, ultimately, making my customers happy and in return accepting their money. There is a price staring you in the face from the moment you arrive at the front page. I think a lot of people sort of fall into freemium because they are hesitant about charging people money. Don't be. Don't chase after customers who don't pay money for stuff -- if you don't pay money for stuff, don't chase after yourself, find a niche which does pay money for stuff. Solve their problems. Get paid for it, like everyone else who solves their problems. Incidentally, I sort of like OSS for being a friend catcher in the support of a paid-for project. (Note that this is very different from the usual "We'll OSS it and then create a premium version of the same thing, then viciously compete against ourselves for customers and mindshare" strategy.) [Edited to add: Incidentally, to get to ~2,000 paying customers I had to attract substantially in excess of 100k free trials, although the web version now converts much better (2.07% or so). Since they cost me essentially no marginal effort no marginal cost beyond advertising, I'm totally OK with that. If they were paying monthly I'd be sitting pretty!]

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

It seems odd to contrast 37signals against open source. They don't release all their software as open source, but they do a fair bit and seem to have generated a lot of PR out of it. If anything they're poster-boys for building both a business and a community by open sourcing elements further down their stack.