This is a book every business that's using the web - and that should be every business
- needs to have on the shelf and to study. This is free advice. Cherish it.
Broadly Anderson suggests there are three ways to do business incorporating free.
A direct cross-subsidy, such as a free gift, or buy one, get one free. A three way
process, like advertising, where a consumer gets the product free because the advertiser
pays the broadcaster (or equivalent) for access to the audience. And freemium, where
the products and services are available as free versions, plus pay versions with
more value - and the pay versions subsidize the free versions.
As he points out, what has changed hugely is that the internet makes it much easier
to offer things for free, because the marginal cost of doing so is so low. And this
means that many information-only products will tend to drift towards free, using
one of the three techniques mentioned above to (hopefully) keep revenue flowing.
It's not just a nice to have, with information products it's almost an essential.
Anderson cleverly lists all the main objections to the idea of making things free
and shows why they are flawed.
