Mimeo Lounge

The Power of Free

Posted on February 29, 2008 at 5:08pm, written by Jeff Grill, VP Marketing

Great article in this months Wired magazine on the power of “Free” in promoting your business.  Chris Anderson makes the case that everything digital eventually approaches “free” to the point that new business models can emerge.  The best example is Google search where the product’s utility is free and then the traffic is monetized.  Another example would be to give your product away for free such as someone that sends you a free sample, in the hope that replenishing a mop (think swifter) or replacing a blade then generates revenue.

As we launch Mimeo Marketplace we now are creating a capability where the document owner can set the pricing of documents in their own ecommerce storefront.  As they seek to set a price for documents it will be interesting to see the different models that emerge.  Can a critical document be free if it turns a document requester into a long term customer?  An example would be offering a free copy of a research study to future purchasers of research services.

Mimeo Marketplace promises to turn the economics of documents on its head.  The next few months should be fun as new marketing models emerge.

Tags: chris_anderson, free_marketing, marketing, mimeo_marketplace, wired_magazine