The freemium model is finally working.
Give the product away to your tribe for free, let them use it until they’re blue in the face, then, once they realize the value of the product – and the increasingly important role it plays in their lives – you make money via micro transactions along the way like upgrades, paid subscriptions, cheat codes, level walkthoughs, feature unlocks, removing ad content, premium versions, more space, complementary products, technical support and connecting lonely users at live events.
Piece of cake.
But first, it all starts with making the free product great enough that everybody will take it and use it forever. That’s the big secret of technology, it’s not about what the product can do, but how enjoyable it is to use.
Because if you can make something people enjoy using, they’ll use it more. And once you skyrocket the number of people aching to stay, eventually, enough of those people will be willing to to pay.
In the words of Phil Libin, “The easiest way to get a million people to pay for non scarcity product is to make a hundred million people fall in love with it.”
