Making the "Free" Business Model Work In a Tough Economy 188
Randy Savage writes "With venture capital on hold and advertising revenue down, the WSJ discusses where online business models might go. 'Over the past decade, we have built a country-sized economy online where the default price is zero — nothing, nada, zip. Digital goods — from music and video to Wikipedia — can be produced and distributed at virtually no marginal cost, and so, by the laws of economics, price has gone the same way, to $0.00. For the Google Generation, the Internet is the land of the free. '"
Re:Volume (Score:5, Informative)
I think you're missing the point. I can't speak to Facebook, but Steam makes their money off of the games hosted. When you purchase a game through Steam, you indirectly support it. Slashdot has a subscription service if you're interested. The key advantage is being able to see stories before they go live. (Which lets you compose your thoughts and post them in a well-formed manner before the comments are open.) Wikipedia is not a for-profit organization. You can make a donation if you like as that is the only way to support their services.
Re:Wait (Score:2, Informative)
Did you even read the rest of the sentence you quoted?
Re:micropayments (Score:4, Informative)
The model that has evolved for webcomics typically balances on the following legs:
1) Ads (Adsense, Project Wonderful, etc.)
2) Books, T-Shirts, buttons, stickers, etc.
3) Comics Conventions (to boost sales of said merch)
4) Original art
*
*
Profit!
There are over 10,000 webcomics that simply don't make any money and a few that make a respectable living for the artist.
The key here is that the artist is also an entrepreneur and not above selling trinkets. He (or she) only needs to cover his (or her) cost of living.
I have a webcomic that is a few months old and have been researching and studying these models. I am in the 10,000+ group and would like to move into the other, smaller group some day.
I won't post a link here because a) people will call me bad names for self-promotion, b) it is designed for children, not the Slashdot demographic and c) my servers don't need that kind of a workout.
Just for the record I would very much like to get $100/day, but have far less than 10,000 readers.
The usual metric is 1,000 True Fans (based on a blog you can google... not mine, but again, I don't want to melt anybody's servers). If you can get a 1,000 true fans to buy $100 worth of stuff a year, you can pretty much quit your day job and still cover luxuries like health care insurance...
Re:We don't need no stinkin' money (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not even slighly related to software development - and yet, most of my colleagues suck.