Who wants to pay when it can be free?

I think Chris Anderson’s notion that “free” is a market strategy within itself is an interesting point. I think many of us look at free as just free. You don’t have to pay. But looking closer it is a marketing strategy that has come to be expected on the Internet. For example in class on Thursday when I mentioned the aggregator for RSS feeds called www.shrook.com I mentioned how it was free but only for 30 days. I saw a couple of faces look down and go “oh”. They did that because they know if this one site is going to charge chances are they can find another site that does the same thing that is free. So that leaves the question of why should a site charge for its services when another could offer a similar product for free?

Of course every site is going to claim they can offer something the other site can’t. But how many sites out there are really offering something others can’t? I say there’s only a handful. I find it interesting that this conversation has been going on since the late 1990’s, especially before the tech bust. I would have thought everyone would want to charge back then since it was new and no one using the Internet knew better.

That fact that the debate of free vs. fee is still going on shows that no one has found a business model that works. I just did a search on YouTube for “How to make money on the Internet” and I came back with 36,800 videos. Some people explained how they made their millions (sure!), some were promoting making YouTube videos for money, and others really didn’t have any helpful advice. I don’t think there is any question that free is always going to beat paying a fee.