Free service does not really charge it

Many services now tend to be free, that is, do not charge any fees, free to provide you with what you need. Is this a good model for users, in fact? Here are some of the things that are available on the internet, and this one is from Q & A.

ask:

More and more services tend to be free and legitimate, and turn revenue from other sources, but is it really "free"? ISPs often pass on profits to real goods or service providers So, the real sense of gratuity is almost nonexistent (such as advertising). However, the actual item providers in turn pass on the cost of advertisements to the consumers. As a result, the user's offline consumption virtually "free" bills for themselves and others, so that we can see that it is not a strange thing to charge for free. Is this a good model for users?

Know almost friends Su Li An:

I was puzzled by the differences and boundaries between free and paid services for a long time and then saw a sentence that made me startling:

If businesses provide you with free services, then you are not their customers, but their products.

See clearly this sentence, look at those free services, it suddenly:

Google and Baidu search service, hundreds of millions of people using the search service has become a successful product, advertisers spend money actually in the purchase of this huge "product" in front of the exposure rate;

TV stations compete for ratings for a variety of programs. The audience is the product, attracting popularity by program and dividing the audience's age, gender, and hobby, and then selling these disparate audiences to the appropriate manufacturers to show them in front of them Own goods

But if you watch paid channels, then you become a client, first of all do not have to be troubled by advertising, and secondly, the attitude of the television station from you "attraction, classification" into a "service, to meet";

Free players in online games, just have to give them some basic fun, and then be limited to the fun to attract a small part of them to upgrade to paying players (customers). Most of the players are always free, is actually packaged into a huge "Prince Edward reading" groups for the players pay to kill, lead, command; and less paid people also want to pay more to pay the larger Prince They study

For large shopping malls, customers are not direct customers, shop tenants are, customers are actually the products they provide to shops, to attract the right type of shop for customers is their purpose. Therefore, identify the positioning of shopping malls to attract the appropriate businessmen stationed for targeted publicity, and even free air conditioning, buses, seats, public toilets such a triviality, are to provide shops as much as possible to provide more customers.

Back to the topic. Free is a good thing? This does not matter good or bad, free is a business model, the key to see what the purpose of free.

- If you want to free users to upgrade to a true paid customers, it will provide limited free services, at the same time take a variety of ways to filter out the willing to pay users and attract them to upgrade;

- If free users are pure products and real customers are another group of people, then free services will be used to attract as many "real clients" as they want and filter out useless ones;

- If both, we must consider separately, how to achieve the balance between the two; if the marketing approach is wrong, may lose his wife and discount.

So, a free service easy to use or not easy to use, in most cases depends on the business hope that you how these users do:

- If you feel bad, but pay can become easy to use, that is, businesses want you to pay;

- If you feel bad, you choose to leave, that is, you belong to the part of the business users want to screen out: do not want to spend money, but also not as a product sold to the real value of the customer;

- If it is free and easy to use, then you and your business are in fact the win-win relationships you are looking for and exactly what they expect.

Finally remember a word: no matter what kind of free mode, its ultimate goal is to make a profit !!!