Best Uses of Freemium

I’ve been thinking about freemium as I lay awake at night lusting over my business idea crush. I think that I may be on to something, so I started surfing for the best uses of the freemium business model, and there are currently a sparse number of results.

No Freemium Searches

What I found to be very surprising was Google’s conclusion that there is limited interest in the term freemium, via monthly searches. It’s hard to believe given the number of web businesses trying to utilize some iteration of the freemium business model on-line.

Isn’t everybody trying to figure this thing out, and thus searching for ways to do it? Shouldn’t we be?

Gaining Steam?

Despite a lack of monthly searches, I think that the conversation around free has picked up tremendously since Chris Anderson’s book, Free, hit book stores last month. Someone else who is deep into the freemium discussion is Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson, who started talking about freeconomics back in 2006.

I just came across one of Fred’s latest posts on the topic, Monetize the Audience, Not the Content, and I found it to be a great read, and a great concept. Like a few commenters on that post, I think that news services segmenting free and premium content, ESPN Insider for example, are archaic in design.

I think this for one main reason: There is no scoop anymore… I can find the same or similar information from other sports sites around the internets, or I can talk with people about “premium” news that I care about on any number of specialized message boards on-line. I don’t think that content should be monetized, because I don’t know that it can be monetized in a connected world.

Three Different Models

Now that I’m off my soapbox, here are some innovative ways to utilize the freemium business model:

Flickr Users are able to use most features within a monthly limit. Limits are dropped and additional features are granted, such as analytics, for paying customers.

Financial Times Full access to the website is granted for a limited number of visits per month. Paying customers receive unlimited monthly access.

Salon Full content access is granted. Paying customers receive ability to comment on content.

I really like the Flickr model, and love that it started over five years ago, yet we’re all really starting to talk about the freemium phenomenon now. I think that an extended monthly free trial, what Financial Times is doing, is a cool concept and finding the conversion sweet spot is interesting to me. Paying to be part of a community seems like it would be tough to pull off, but if Salon can do it then more power to them.

Where I think Freemium Should Go

If content can’t/shouldn’t be monetized, then convenience features around the content itself should be… This is something that I’ve really been thinking about lately. So many services seek to change my behavior on-line. They try to make me do things their way. The question in my mind is, will people pay for the ability to do things the way that they want to do them?

I think that they will.

As an example, I am able to share content from within Google Reader itself, but feedly allows me to share content on social networks I belong to as well as the standard features that Google allows. Its a breeze to post a link to Twitter or Facebook from within the tool. This saves some steps and makes things extremely convenient for me. Plus it’s an integrated experience. I stay in one place to conduct business.

Feedly doesn’t currently charge, but if they did I would pay for the convenience features… And I would also pay to be able to use these features on my mobile device.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think about freemium sites? Are they destined to become extinct, or are they the future of the internets as I think that they will be? Should more people be talking about the subject? Please let me know what you think in the comments below.