FREEMIUM BUSINESS : SATISFACTION MAXIMUM

Freemium ( contraction of free and premium ) is an interessant concept as far as creating a new traffic of procpect on your website is concerned. In order to transform any visitor in potential client you decide to provide your service or part of it for free, in order to give to your customer the drive to buy your service or to buy additional value. It is the “sample give-away” version of direct marketing and it is the most welcoming way to attract customers. It is a very efficient way to attract customers through word of mouth referral network.You can support or not your offer by advertising message.

Advantages :
 Quick way to build a customer base,
 Excellent way to promote a new service or product
 No or very low cost if you organise well your offer

Disavantages :
 The way you technically sort the offer out could putt off your customer (registration, asking for credit card details even if not used),
 Download of any document could be time consuming for the prospect and you migt lose him.
 Disappointment when the offer is withdrawn the next time you go on the website or if the service or product offer is not sent or offered.

To avoid any of the disappointment the company who decides to use that should :
- Make sure the offer is well supported by material market share informations to perfectly fit the target, (SiteKreator’s owner “, we try to limit the “myspace” generation from using our service as they have a zero conversion ratio and very low probability to bring in paying customers. We noticed that 75% of our bandwidth was coming from swapping copyrighted materials like mp3s, games, music videos, etc”
- . Make sure that technically it is user friendly and supported by the right technology (Windowws, OSX and linux
When the customer is happy to pay for the service you offer ( longer video time, full course version, cost for vitual storage ) then you can think you made a good job.


Animoto got me in with Pemium
Animoto is a website specialised in creation of animated still pictures based on music frequency. Each animationis different thanks to the pictures or the music chosen.
Thanks to this websiteyou can become your own movief-creator of animated album picturesfor free, using free copy right music..
Through sending your creation to your friends, Animoto got an opportunity to get new prospect whom he offers to do the same as you did in the fist place : TRY.
Once you are hooked, the 30 seconds free movie is not enough , you want more and you become ready to pay 30 dollars for unlimited creation in number and in time.
www.animoto.com


Skype did not do it for me
On the contrary, Skype did not do it for me because once I managed to call my friends through it , I did not like the quality of the phone conversation so I could not figure out why I should pay for additional services when I can get for free through other ways. For example I can call my friendsabroad through MSN messenger and through Alice so I do not need SKYPE.. www.skype.com/



Information source :

http://www.goodproductmanager.com/2007/01/23/making-free-products-or-freemiums/

avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/03/the_freemium_bu.html - 55k