"freemium" entries

Business models to monetize publishing in the digital era

The third in a series looking at the major themes of this year's TOC conference.

Several overriding themes permeated this year's Tools of Change for Publishing conference. The third in a series looking at five major themes, here we look at monetization in publishing, including subscription/access models, freemium, and ad-based models.

Commerce Weekly: Google defends its Wallet

Google responds to Wallet concerns, Buck enters the one-click fray, and Adele snubs freeloaders.

Google calmly responds to concerns about its Wallet application, yet another one-click payment method emerges, and Adele fans won't be using Spotify. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

O'Reilly Radar Show 2/10/12: The 5 trends that will shape the data world

Big data trends to watch. Kevin Kelly on freemium and DRM.

Strata chair Edd Dumbill discusses the five trends that will drive the near-term future of data science and big data. Also, Kevin Kelly offers a long-view perspective on the freemium model and digital rights management.

Commerce Weekly: Slow in-app purchasers are worth the wait

Digging into in-app purchase data, Bitcoin draws attention outside tech, PayPal and HomeDepot expand point-of-sale trial.

Study finds that users who wait to make their first in-app purchase are worth more. Also, Bitcoin's popularity is rising, and PayPal expands its point-of-sale program. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

Promoting free downloads to increase revenue

Nelson Saba on how freemium is helping his Glo Bible app.

Publishers continue to struggle with the concept of a freemium business model. In this TOC podcast, Nelson Saba, CEO of Immersion Digital, talks about his Glo Bible app and how upgrade conversion rates are surprisingly good.

Leaky paywalls and ads: What publishers can learn from the New York Times

How advertising and freemium apply to books.

Recent analysis of the New York Times' online paywall has put emphasis on advertising and the freemium model. Book publishers may not realize it, but those same things can also apply to their content products.

Four short links: 14 October 2010

Four short links: 14 October 2010

Google Price Index, The High Cost of Freemium, Literate Programming, Results Clustering

  1. Google Creates New Inflation Measure (The Guardian) — The Google Price Index will be based on the cost of goods sold online and could use real-time search data to forecast official figures. Clever use of unique data, but can the GPI findings be reproduced by another agency? I do like the idea of moving national statistical measures into real-time.
  2. How To Break The Trust of Your Customers In Just One Day — some horrifying revelations about how freemium worked for Chargify and their customers: Over the past year, we discovered that the customer that never paid had the highest support load. […] Everyone’s always talking about freemium, but very few people actually use it, and we discovered this in looking at our customers for the past year. The reality was that less than 0.4% of customers had any sizeable number of free customers on their accounts. (via Hacker News)
  3. Annotated Backbone.js — very readable literate programming. (via Simon Willison)
  4. Carrot2 — open source results clustering engine.

News Roundup: Google Mobile App Taps Amazon for Data, Orphan Works and Copyright Confusion, Arguing Against "Freemium," Digital Marketing Examples for Publishers, DRM on Comeback Trail?

A Google-Amazon Mobile Application Android Scan, one of the winners from the Google Android Developer Challenge, uses cell phone cameras and barcode recognition to tap into Amazon's review database. (Continue reading) Orphan Works Legislation and Copyright Conundrums Kenny Crews at Collectanea says the orphan works bills in the House and Senate impose hurdles for scholarly/research/casual uses. Crews offers a real…

An Argument Against "Freemium" Content

The "pay to remove ads" model — also known as "freemium" — is inherently flawed, argues Andrew Parker: Why? Because the people in your audience with disposable income who are willing to pay for web services are the same ones that will self-select out of your audience for your ads. So, all that remains in your audience are people…