The Online Free Business Model

The Online Free Business Model

Daniel Nelson | 17/10/2008

You have probably considered various models for generating revenue with your media but have you ever considered offering it for free?

Even if you aren’t ready for the free business model yet, your visitors are.  With free offerings such as unlimited email through Yahoo or unlimited video storage through YouTube, Internet users are rapidly shifting their expectations to this model. As this trend increases, visitors to your site may be increasingly less likely to pay for your media. Although the idea of giving away your valuable media may seem a little ridiculous at first, there are numerous alternative avenues for profit.

The most obvious course of generating revenue centers on advertising to your site visitors. When information, videos, or audio clips are accessed, there are certain assumptions that can be made about the viewer based on the content of the media. Your media will eventually create its own targeted market. You can easily capitalize on this group by taking the obvious approach and selling advertisement placement to relevant businesses. However, you can use this group for additional purposes such as renting your list of subscribers to another business or even selling demographic information.

If you offer software you can consider offering it as a “freemium”. Freemium software is typically a basic version of a product that is offered free of charge. Users can then buy a version of the software with additional features. If priced effectively, the licenses for the advanced software should cover the cost of the free offering. A prime example of the freemium model can be seen in the iPhone apps store where developers release a free basic version of their application and to entice people to try in hopes of them buying the full featured version.

Traditional ecommerce approaches can also be used to drive revenue. This works well when you are supplying products relating to your free content. For example, if you decided to provide free online manuals on gardening, you may want to consider selling related gardening supplies on the site as well.

If you have generated a great deal of valuable content, you can license your content to other sites or sources. This is an excellent way to stretch the investment you initially made on your media.

These examples highlight only a few of the numerous options you can utilize to earn big by giving your media away for free.

tags: Online Trends ,  Online Marketing ,  Business