How does free affect you:
Perception is everything in this world. And FREE resonates. It resonates with consumers, with the rich, with the poor, and it will resonate with your customers. Content is now free, and becomes content is another form of data, data is becoming free.
If you can sell X of something at $1.00 you could probably increase that by 100X if it were free. Free allows for viral activity. If someone where to have to pay to see or share a video on Youtube, how viral would they have been?
What are your costs?
Zero. For content distribution. It is estimated to cost $0.25 per hour of streaming video this year, going to $0.15 next year, and even lower the following year. Video is one of the most expensive costs for content distribution.
Hosting costs are rapidly decreasing as well. With the advent of the Cloud companies are paying as they go. It is now possible to run company without a dedicated server, that only costs the company based on the actual usage and those costs are decreasing as well.
How do you monetize free?
With ancillary products and services. Just like musicians who are making money off concerts and merchandise, you will have to find a way to do the same for your business.
If you can’t charge for the data, then charge for something directly related to it. What that might be only you can answer.
About nathan kaiser
