[Business] [idea] Free-the future of business free the future of a radical price-Chris Anderson (US)

Recently, I had some development ideas. So I read some books on business models. Among them, this free book has made me think for a long time.

Free is written by Anderson, who is also the author of Long Tail theory. I have a deep understanding of the business model. If the model in the book "Long Tail Theory" is the United States, the book "free" is a lot of reference to the most practical cases in China. Observe the best free view, not in the United States, but in China. In such a country with a high degree of Internet development, many laws have not yet been perfected, as a result, many software is not completely protected by law, and the free policies of several internet companies cultivate more users to get used to such free policies. If your software is billed, 99.9% of users are blocked. Therefore, a free policy is widely used. Zhou Hongwei, CEO of 360, also said: "OverIn the past ten years, there have been almost no cases of billing and success for the global Internet."

The author cited a large number of examples as the most valuable cases in this book. Among them are the most famous golden Geely Shavers, Google products, Microsoft IE products, free air travel by Ryanair, free experience workshop in Tokyo, free newspapers ...... The author also summarized several free models. We also introduced the free benefits and the negative effects of dealing with them. Some experiments make this book more fascinating.

Let's take a look at our daily free services. Microsoft's operating system (cracking), QQ (free), browser (free), 360 security (free), free online games, and free album MP3 ...... We use things that don't have to spend money every day. Do you think their company will not go bankrupt in this way? Otherwise, you can make a profit for free, depending on your business strategy.

In the United States, Google opened the 114 free phone query service, So Google will not suffer losses? Not only do we need to invest manpower (operators), material resources (office equipment), financial resources (electricity fees), etc., but it will also increase the company's management class's attention, that is, it consumes a lot of energy from the top management. Maybe you think so? In fact, I think so. I don't know how Google can find a way to make profits. However, the author's opinions open up doubts in my mind: Google's strategy is like playing chess, and we only focus on the gains and losses of a car; google is concerned with global industrial trends. Google invests in the establishment of the telephone query service, mainly because of the "information" of the person who wants to obtain the query service ". That is to say, Google will record every conversation and analyze it through software and manpower. Including the address, accent, age, and gender of your phone call. In this way, we can better develop Google's current speech function development. More user-friendly software will attract more people. Presumably, Google knows that this service will be based on losses, but it can better fill in its own defects and make better use of resources elsewhere to integrate its own enterprises, it also better shows its own image. This is the first free profit model-"cross-subsidy ". Cross-subsidy is one of the most widely used free-of-charge models. For example, QQ (paying users subsidize free users) and Geely Shavers (the cost of tool holders for Blade profits subsidies )......
The authors believe that 5% of paying users are the source of all website revenues. Because the cost of another 95% of users is very low (the marginal cost of software is almost zero ).

Free is not an option during your operation, but an inevitable choice. Marginal cost should be equal to your pricing. The marginal cost of digital information is almost zero.

The following are three free models and examples of sales promotion using this model:

• free Mode 1: direct cross-subsidy
  complimentary product, sales Service (free gift obtained when a bank account or credit card is activated)
  complimentary mobile phone and sales call time (China Telecom and mobile operators need your fixed monthly phone fee)
  buy one get one free (supermarket strategy)
  free shipping for full 100 (online mall Strategy)
  free trial (supermarket pilot test and trial)
  Free Parking (minimum purchase required)
• free mode 2: third-party market (one-class customers subsidize the other-class customers)
  free news, attracting users and earning advertising fees (supported by advertisers)
  complimentary credit cards, commission rates for major card swipe devices
  adult fees, free for children
  
• free mode 3: free and paid (some customers subsidize other customers)
  complimentary online content, sales of printed content (books)
  free games, paid equipment (journey)
  give away computers to talk to computers, sell computers to talk to mobile phones (Skype software)
  give away common software, and charge VIP fees (qq)