Freemium, the business model championed by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, is now slowly taking its place in business. As of this writing, more and more companies offering freemium products and services are slowly rising to the top of their class, all visibly viable, healthy and making money. Among the most notable to date are Evernote, Remember The Milk and Dropbox. The list also includes Freshbooks, Jott.com, Box.net and good old Flickr.com. The new startup Xobni joined in, using the ad-supported model. What makes these companies tick? How were they able to convert such a “free” model...

  Freemium is the latest business model that new startup companies are focusing their eyes on these days with the intention of making concrete profits out of such an innovative business style. What, actually, is freemium? What makes it such a radical business concept? In a nutshell, freemium (a coined term from the words “free” and “premium”) or free giveaway is a business model with the premise of giving away the company’s product (or service) for free, with an eye of making a profit in the long run. The root idea is to cultivate a paying customer base out of the collated free...

  There is a lively discussion among online business practitioners on the many pros and cons centered on the new freemium business model or better known as giveaways. Some other items are thrown into the forum (open source business models, development models, and others) including the hairline distinctions between free and freemium. There had also been declarations on the distinctions (and which model is better) between an open-source business model compared to the development model. However, since the industry is in current flux and is still evolving as it is, there had been no definite...

  Freemium or free giveaways, like any other business, is employed with the main objective of making money. How to do that is also the reason why this new business model is born – the main idea is being able to adapt to the changing market and the changing conditions of production. Loosely defined, freemium is a business model where a product (or service) is given away for free, in the hope of earning from it later by way of charging present users to upgrades of the product or perhaps on product versions that are fully functional. Product value With the dizzying pace of today’s...