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关于免费增值模式的类型及使用方法

发布时间:2011-09-07 18:08:39 Tags:,,,

作者:Uzi Shmilovici

免费提供产品或不同版本的产品一直是一个备受争议的问题。

价格问题总是很棘手。但是很不幸,许多企业家经常忽视这一问题。他们要不就是经常模仿类似产品的定价,要不就是依赖于所谓的专家那些毫无依据的陈述或者一些谬论(游戏邦注:如我们很辛苦地做出这个产品,所以我们就必须要价高一点)而制定价格。

免费模式变得越来越复杂,同时也连带出越来越多需要面对的问题。对此我们需要制定出一个根本的解决方法,并深入探析为何同样使用这一模式,有的公司取得了成功,有的公司却惨遭失败。通过参考一些经济学学术论文,行为心理学相关书籍以及一些公司采用的相关策略,我们获得了以下一些重要观点。

free-premium(from-freemium.org)

free-premium(from-freemium.org)

边际成本原理

价格在帮助产品获取用户的过程中扮演着非常重要的角色。在此有一个与万有引力定律同等重要的经济学理论:在一个完全竞争的市场中,长期的产品价格(也称为“市场结算价格”)将最终成为一种产品边际成本。

因为主机和频带宽度成本的下降,如今绝大部分网络产品的边际成本几乎为零。

换句话说,如果你用来服务用户的成本为零,那么你的产品在市场上的长期价格也将归于零(迫于激烈的竞争压力)。

经验产品

“免费”模式的核心就在于那些提供给用户的产品或服务。绝大多数网络产品被定义为经验产品,即用户需要一段时间的试用后才能判断该产品是否能为他们带来价值。

Dropbox(游戏邦注:Dropbox公司运行的在线存储服务,通过云计算实现因特网上的文件同步,用户可以存储并共享文件和文件夹)就是一个典型的例子。用Drew Houston(Dropbox的CEO)的话来说:“Dropbox正是在提供这样一种产品,即只有用户尝试过后才知道自己是否需要它。”

这一行已有许多关于经验产品定价的学术知识。在1983年,经济学家Carl Shapiro写了一篇关于这个主题的论文。他总结道,因为用户通常都会低估产品价值,那么这个经验产品的最佳定价策略就是采用较低的入门价格,等到用户意识到了产品的价值再提高其价格。

有时候顾客会低估产品的价格,这时候最佳定价策略便是在一开始尽量抬高要价,或者与顾客签订长期的价格协议。

这就是为何企业要求顾客预付产品或服务费用,或者签订长期协议时,他们不想购买产品的原因。

因此,入门价格可以说是一种重要的信号机制。即如果你给出较低的入门价格,那就意味着你对自己的产品充满自信,坚信它能为顾客创造出好价值。

免费的心理因素

这一行有许多关于免费心理因素的文章。其中Chris Anderson的《Free》和Dan Ariely的《Predictably Irrational》更是深刻地解析了这一主题。简单地说,免费模式对于用户来说是一个敏感问题,能够立即减少他们心中的购买障碍。免费模式让用户认为自己不会有所损失而因此忽视了其中的时间投入等成本。

这么看来,免费模式能够促进用户使用产品,但是从另一个角度来看,如果商家采用了免费模式,那就很难再改变用户的消费心理,也无法轻易变更这一销售模式。这种状况就像“一分钱的差别”一样,商家甚至难以让用户掏出一分钱去购买产品了。这就是为何你需要谨慎使用免费模式的原因。

决定因素

如果上述内容都是对的,这么看来免费模式为广大商家提出了一道选择题。显然,做出选择不是件易事。我将列出一个基本的框架,帮助你做出更明智的选择。注意:关于每一个复杂问题背后都有一个简单的解决方法这一论断是错的。我所列出的框架只是帮助你做参考,因为并不存在任何万能的规范标准。

你需要明白一些问题:

你希望自己的公司能有多大的发展规模?如果你只是想创建一种足够维持生计的企业,每个月从中获得8千美元的收入,并且你拥有一款不错的产品,那么你便可以不采用免费模式。但是如果你想要建立一家拥有实质性市场份额的大公司,那么免费模式将能够帮你赢得更多顾客。

免费用户的价值?所有成功使用了免费模式的公司都有办法从免费用户身上赚钱并节省开支。这些使用免费模式的公司有的从中节约了市场营销成本(如Dropbox),有的从广告或数据中赢得了收益(如Pandora,Evernote,Mint),也有的在两方面均获得了成效。如果你的免费用户不能帮助你节省市场营销开支,或者从第三方手中赚取利益,那么你最好立刻想想问题出在哪。

为免费用户提供服务需要付出多大代价?这是这种模式需要注意的一大关键点。如果你投入了很多金钱或时间去服务免费用户,那么你将会因此损失很多资金。你需要确保的是,服务免费用户所投入的成本应该低于他们为你带来的利益(游戏邦注:即所谓的LTV>CPA,用户终身价值应大于用户获取成本)。

你的市场有多大?Evernote的CEO曾经说过“获得1百万付费用户的最简便方法,就是找到10亿名使用产品的用户”。免费模式其实为你提供了另外一种盈利的方法。但是你需要进入一个大市场,并且拥有足够多愿意购买产品的用户。

如果一个顾客能从其他使用这一产品的顾客口中获得该产品的相关信息,那么这将带来何种价值?这将决定着有多少新用户是受免费用户影响而采取行动。以下是三种不同级别的价值:

内在价值:你可以用Skype与同样在使用这一工具的其他人聊天。你可以与其他Dropbox用户分享一个Dropbox文件夹。在这种情况下,免费模式便是一种很有效的策略。

附加值:你不在乎其他人是否在使用Evernote(游戏邦注:这是一款在国外非常著名的笔记软件,界面与功能类似于Onenote)。在这种情况下,如果你使用了免费模式,那么你便能因此获得一种吸引力。

无价值:你不在乎其他人是否在使用Evernote。而这时候只有当用户觉得产品或服务非常棒,他们才会告诉其他用户。

Piggy bank(from from omalleyblog.typepad.com)

Piggy bank(from from omalleyblog.typepad.com)

不同类型的“免费模式”

实行免费模式的一大关键因素便是产品或服务的供应结构。这也是免费模式和收费模式的区别。有多种不同类型的免费模式策略。以下我们将列出几大较受欢迎的策略:

真正的免费模式:即以免费模式发行一个产品的版本,而其它版本则照常收费。有两种方法能够帮助你实现这一策略:

以价值为基础,这可以说这是最有效的一种免费模式策略。用户越频繁使用一种产品,他就能因此获得更多价值,并因此提高使用产品的转换成本,而这时候他将会意识到产品的使用限制,而选择购买付费版本成为一名付费用户。Evernote和Dropbox都成功使用了这一方法。

以特征为基础,例如免费提供产品给一名用户(这取决于公司规模大小)。让我们以B2B模式为例。如果我是一名自由职业者,我将永远使用B2B且不需要对此进行升级。但是如果我在一个拥有3名职员的公司上班,并且我不能再添加更多的用户,那么我将只是尝试着使用这一应用,而且我不清楚这个应用的价值。

产品免费,附加内容收费模式:免费发行一种产品并通过其它额外内容中收取费用。

限时免费试用:免费试用X天后开始收费。这时问题便变成,X天具体是指几天?一方面你需要创造出一种紧迫感,让玩家赶紧抓住免费机会,另一方面你又希望用户能够从这一系统中看到产品的价值所在。

开放资源与免费模式

近来我发现很多企业家混淆了开放资源与免费模式间的关系,所以我认为如果能够明确做出区分,那么对于理解这两个定义都将很有帮助。开放资源能够促进产品的流通,它是一种有效的免费模式。它有两大优点。它可以让开发者更加依赖于你的产品(如使用WordPress),这有助于让你加速开发产品。另外一大优点便是通过让客户掌握源代码而因此让他们放下戒备。你可以通过其中一些高级功能或者附加服务而从中获得盈利。这便是开放资源与免费模式的最大区别。开放资源意味着你的代码是公开的,其他人可以创建一家公司并使用这一代码盈利。你需要记住的是,开放资源是一种难以改变的模式。

最关键的成功秘诀

当你在决定是否采用免费模式的时候,你需要考虑很多因素。然而还有一点我未与你们分享。在整篇文章中,我们发现所有成功运用了免费模式的公司都有一个统一的模式,即他们都拥有非常优秀的产品。除非你所提供的产品或服务足够吸引人,要不上述的一切方法和技巧都不会管用。如果你所创造的产品不能让用户感受到价值存在,那么再有效的免费模式也帮不了你。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The Complete Guide To Freemium Business Models

By Uzi Shmilovici

The idea of offering your product or a version of it for free has been a source of much debate.

Pricing is always tricky. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t give it enough thought. They will often copy the pricing strategy of similar products, base their decisions on pompous statements made by “experts” or rely on broken rationale (we worked hard so we should charge $X).

Free is even trickier and with so many opinions about it, we thought it would be refreshing to take a critical approach and dive deep into why some companies are very successful at employing the model while other companies fail. We’ve looked into economics academic papers, behavioral psychology books and strategies that worked for companies to come up with the key concepts below.

The Law of Marginal Cost

Pricing plays a huge part in competing for customers. Here’s an economic law that holds almost as much truth as the law of gravity: in a perfectly competitive market, the long-term product price (aka “market clearing price”) will be the marginal cost of production.

Guess what? Because of declining hosting and bandwidth costs, for most Internet products the marginal cost today is practically … zero.

In other words, if the cost to serve a customer (support aside) is zero, the long-term price of the product in the market will be zero (because of competitive pressure).

An Experience Good

At the core of the “Free” models are the products or services being offered to the customer. Most Internet products or services fall into the definition of an Experience Good: a product that needs a period of use before the customer can determine the value they can derive from it.

A good example is Dropbox. Consider Drew Houston’s words: “The fact was that Dropbox was offering a product that people didn’t know they needed until they tried.”

There are plenty of academics who looked into the pricing of Experience Goods. In 1983, the Economist Carl Shapiro wrote a fascinating paper about this subject. His conclusion was that since customers tend to underestimate the value of a product, the optimal pricing for an experience good is a low introductory price which is then increased when the customer realizes the value of the product.

In some cases, a customer might overestimate the value of the product. In that case, the optimal pricing strategy is to charge as much in the beginning or to lock in customers with long-term contracts.

This is why customers are reluctant to buy when someone asks them to prepay for a service or product or sign a long-term contract.

Hence, the introductory price is a signaling mechanism. The conclusion?  A low entrance price signals that you are confident that your product will create value for the customer.

The Psychology of Free

Much has been written about the Psychology of Free. Two books that looked specifically into the subject are “Free” by Chris Anderson and “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely. Putting it simply, Free is an emotional hot button that immediately reduces the mental barriers for the customer. Free makes people think that they have “nothing to lose” since many ignore time as an investment.

From this perspective, free is a huge accelerator of adoption. The flip side of this is that after using the product for free, it is very hard to get the customer to start paying for it. This phenomenon was broad enough to get its own name: “The penny gap”—the hardest part is to get your customer to pay you the first penny. This is why it is so critical to choose your premium features wisely.

Decision Factors

If all that is true, it seems like Free (or Freemium) is the answer. Well…. not so fast. The decision is definitely not easy. Here’s a basic framework to help you make a more informed decision. A word of caution though: for every complex problem there’s a simple solution … and it’s wrong. The framework is helpful as a thinking tool but there’s no magic formula.

Here’s a set of questions that you’ll need to ask yourself:

How big do I want my company to be? If you are looking to build a lifestyle business that’ll make you $8,000 a month and you have a good product, you can probably do without Freemium. If you want to build a dominant company that has a substantial market share, Freemium can help you accelerate adoption.

What is the value of the free users? Across all successful Freemium companies, there is a way of making money or saving money from the free users. Either by saving on marketing costs (Dropbox) or by making money from ads or data (Pandora, Evernote, Mint) or both. If you cannot turn your free users into savings in marketing costs or revenues from third parties—figure out how!

What is the cost to serve free users?  This is a critical aspect of the model. If you spend a lot of money and/or time servicing free users, you are going to lose a lot of money. The cost of servicing free users must be lower than the dollar value they provide.

How big is my market? “The easiest way to get 1 million people paying is to get 1 billion people using,” says Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote. Free adds another conversion step on your way to revenues. You need a big market to have enough people who will be paying you at the end of the day.

Is there value to one customer from other customers using the product? This will determine how many new users the free users will refer. There are three levels of value:

Inherent value – You can use Skype only if the person you talk with also uses Skype. You can share a Dropbox folder only with other Dropbox users. In this case, Freemium can be a powerful strategy.

Added value – You wouldn’t want to be the only user of LinkedIn. You derive value from other people using it. In this case, Freemium can help you gain traction if you use an effective invitation mechanism.

No value – You don’t care if someone is using Evernote or not. The only reason for one person to tell another about the product or service is if they think it is awesome.

The Types of “Free”

One of the key factors in making Freemium work is the structure of the offering. What is it that you offer for free vs. charge? There are different types of free strategies. Let’s take a look at the popular ones:

True Freemium – Give a version of the product for free and charge a fee for the other versions. There are two ways to go about this:

Value based – The most successful type of Freemium strategy. The more a customer uses the product, the more value she derives, the higher the switching costs are, and at some point she’ll hit a usage limit and convert to a paying customer. Evernote and Dropbox are beautiful examples of this.

Characteristic based – For example offering the product for free for one user (so it is based on company size for instance). Let’s think about a B2B application. If I’m a freelancer, I will use the application forever and I will never have to upgrade. If I’m a 3-person company, I can’t add more users and try the application for real and hence might not get to the point where I see the value in using it.

Free Product for a Cross Subsidy  – Give one product for free and charge for complementary products.

Time Based Free Trial – Give a free trial for X days and start charging once the trial ends. The issue here is figuring out what X is. On one hand you want to create a sense of urgency, on the other hand you need the customer to see the value in the system.

Open Source as a Free model

Lately I’ve seen many entrepreneurs confuse Open Source with Free so I thought it would be helpful to make the distinction. An open source model can definitely accelerate the distribution of your product and is a viable free model. It has two main advantages. You might get developers to contribute to your product (see WordPress). By doing that you can accelerate the development of your product. The other advantage is that you give customers peace of mind as they have control over the source code. You can then make money from selling pro features or value added services. There’s a critical distinction here and that is that your code is out there and anyone can start a company to commercialize this code. Bear in mind that it is very hard (often impossible) to reverse a decision to open-source.

The Last Bit And The Secret To Success

There are many factors to consider when you are evaluating whether to use the Freemium model or not. However, there’s one last secret that I didn’t share with you. During the study, while looking at the successful Freemium companies, a pattern emerged. They all had phenomenal products. All of these decision factors are useless if the product or service you are offering is nothing short of amazing. If your product is not creating great value for its users, no tactic in the world will make Freemium work for you.(source:techcrunch


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