Customers won't give you money unless you ask

This is some good advice. I would also love to see start ups asking for my money.<p>When there's a free plan, my usual activity goes like: - Register - Test - Forget<p>But when I'm paying, it's much different. Not to say that all services shouldn't offer anything free. But at least in my case, charging is doing both of us good. And it also ensures that company will have some sort of revenue to live on and not die as a freemium company!

Free is always the spirit of the internet, but when starting a startup...I was told to spend as much time on my business plan (revenue), as I would coding.<p>When any website or app begins charging, or throwing ads out, there's always an outcry from the users that weren't use to it. Sure being free will probably make any startup grow faster, but to make your users happy...charge, have ads, or AT THE LEAST tell them that you plan to charge later, or aim for acquisition like Instagram :)

I think I'm confused on what the term freemium means. I always thought it meant a product with both a free and paid tiers.<p>This doesn't seem to match with "For example, Freemium works really well when your user IS the product." Such services, like the Facebook example he cites, are free, not freemium. Right?

How about the google apps route as an alternative to freemium?<p>1. Give it away for free for a long period to build a user base, get feedback and iterate.<p>2. After a while, switch to paid only for all new users. The old users continue for free so no-one has a right to get annoyed.<p>Seems a pretty good option to me.

It does feel like a startup strategy is that if you can just manage to get a large amount of free users - then you'll be able to figure out how to monetize it later.<p>We all know that it works in exceptional cases. But many times when I see it, it reminds me of an old Saturday night live skit about "the change store" that provides change for any amount of money without taking a fee. When somebody inquires how they make they're money the owner replies "volume!"

While a good article, i disagree with his statement that by providing a free service, you are implying it does not have any value. I think the free service model is much more deeper than this comment suggests.

You can think of this article as a single case study, nothing really enough to build a theory. Freemium works statistically better than paid, as you can see presented at the recent Google I/O 2013: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ3wgPP7PWY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ3wgPP7PWY</a>

Good article, i will take it into consideration in the start up that i am currently working on. Only one thing that i don't agree, giving something for free dose not always implies it has no value.

What if the demographic an app serves or aimed at is known to be notoriously cash-strapped i.e. university students ?

Actual value vs Perceived value, a key question that many forget and that could solve many monetization problems.

Sometimes when the service is not ready for immediate consumption, devs are bound to release it as a freemium or just free - if they have to release for some reason.<p>There are so many web services are coming out everyday, people cannot just find it very suitable for them and cannot find whether it's good enough.<p>Trial period is good but it is not as good as freemium.