25th
Free us all
Interesting day. Two of my favorite bloggers Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman were writing about the “Free” business models. I highly suggest that you read both of them. It is funny because it is something that I was thinking about this weekend.
Currently at SimulScribe we have a premium product with a very premium price. We have looked at a lot of different pricing models but have found that price is not really our issue. It is adding the step of charging that slows our growth and that is at any price. That is why when I saw Josh’s post I immediately agreed with his comments about how lowering the price is not linear in terms of customer growth.
There really is a difference between free services and paid services and it is not just the price. Every time that you need to make a customer thin, for example the thought of getting out a credit card you lose a percentage of your possible customer conversions. With free services you take most of the thinking out of the process and that is why they spread like the flu.
Sadly I like subscription services too much to take part fully in the free world. It is just not for me. However you will see SimulScribe adding a free entry level service with the purpose of creating up-sell off of it. We will see how that goes very soon.
