On Free

As soon as it became available, with just a simple keyboard shortcut, I logged onto the Kindle Store and downloaded Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for free as it was promised from the author. If you don’t own a Kindle, Scribd has available a digital copy to download or if you prefer the modish touch of a book, then you’ll have to pony up $26.99 for the print edition.

I’m barely up to the second chapter so I wouldn’t dare consider this a formal review but more as a springboard to something else that falls along the same line of thought. But first, here’s Chris’s quick prologue to what the rest of the book focuses on and what to expect:

Therein lies the paradox of Free: People are making lots of money charging nothing. Not nothing for everything, but nothing for enough that we have essentially created an economy as big as a good-sized country around the price of $0.00. How did this happen and where is it going?

No question the free model that he talks about has had an phenomenal increase on the internet but one that I’ve been curious about lately pertains to iPhone apps. Like anyone else, I’ve downloaded a multitude of them and what’s made the indirect agreement between the developer and the consumer even sweeter is that they have distributed some for free and without ads that are poorly placed or have no relevancy. The only exception to this statement being this.

Of course this is an excellent marketing tool especially if a lite version of an app is obtainable but it functions more like a hook for the full paid version and it’s effortless to see the developer’s return on investment assuming they’ve provided a sufficient amount of perks that would make one upgrade.  So my question is this. If there’s no ads in an app, if there’s no lite version available and if it’s free to begin with, where does Anderson’s thesis of “people making lots of money by charging nothing” come into play in this scenario?

The only response I came up with is that a free app is a great marketing tool as I mentioned before, so that in itself can add value to a developer’s work and showcase their ability to excel in the app development business and should subsequently reach out to new potential clients. Is this the case?

I think passion for a craft shouldn’t always be driven by the prospect of monetary gains but at some point I assume these creative geniuses would like to see their long hours materialize into something and as the inquisitive creature that I am, I have interest in knowing how it happens if it does.

2 years ago  /  1 note