Ian Betteridge’s lifestream

But you put in a couple of hurddles, say adverts or slow downloads on the freestuff, which can be easily removed - for a small monthly fee. If your service is good, bar the intentional bad bits, then ppl should be prepared to pay a little - Its what Flickr does well with the 'pro' account - I rarely pay for online services, to me MP3s mean(t) napster not itunes, and i still grudge paying for them, despite spending money on CDs - but I happily paid the $20 or whatever it is to get a pro flickr account, you also get that slightly superior feeling having pro next to your name on your account.

The problem you may have is if someone is offering a similar service for free.

Isn't Freemium just a 'web 2.0' way of saying 'upselling'? And upselling is a long established business practice, along with pyramid selling, prostitution and televangelism. Praise be.

Hi.. Your post got me thinking… What is more valuable for a software company (like facebook or flickr). 1,000 paying users or 100,000 non-paying users? What are your thoughts? View my blog post here: http://www.purlem.com/blog/?p=57