Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now?

RhcpIn case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to Fred Wilson’s description of the “Freemium” business model.

Now let’s segue from there to another reason why freemium really makes sense. Erik Keller at SandHill writes:

“Now this approach may be seen as foolhardy by those who believe that products are always sold rather than just bought. This assertion, however, must be reexamined in the light of rampant license-fee discounting as well as the fact that [a typical enterprise software company] spends over 90 percent of its license fee revenue on sales and marketing expenses. The reality in enterprise software is while most companies do not give away their software, they might as well, given the cost of sales as well as market conditions.” (emphasis added)

I had to reread that paragraph a couple of times to really grok it, but Erik is spot-on: many companies could, arguably, eliminate their “traditional” sales and marketing expenditures, give their products away for free, and still do just about the same on the bottom line.

Put another way…what if your company could turn its sales model on its head, and respond to customer pull, versus selling and marketing via “push?”

(Bonus quote from Erik, from the same article: “When a value-oriented buyer’s point of view is taken, the core of this inefficiency becomes obvious. From an income-statement perspective, the cost of delivering a product and service as well as R&D are customer value-adds: buyers get something direct and of value from these costs. On the other hand, sales and marketing as well as general & administrative expenses are seen as valueless to the buyer. They represent the overhead that a vendor needs to engage the market.”)

Email: “I’m Not Dead, Yet!”

Yes, RSS and feeds are where things are going. That said, the pragmatic folks over at FeedBurner have enabled enhanced email subscription capabilities for blogs. From Burning Questions:

“It turns out that not everybody is quite ready to ditch the old Inbox just yet. People like to be notified when their favorite publishers have something new posted, but a large audience still finds the familiar setting of email to be the most comfortable and reliable way to receive updates. We initially announced feed-by-email support back in October. Since then, we have been asked by a number of our publishers to integrate our own feed-powered email update service, and we are the kind of people who do what is asked of us, if the question is asked nicely, in lower case, with a minimum of question marks.”

FeedBurner actually has three email delivery options: their own, one via FeedBlitz, and another via Squeet.

A quick test run of the service showed it’s easy to set up, and seems to work as advertised. Good job, FeedBurner people!

You can try it here, if you want.

Enter your email address:

(Email subscription is now a feature of the Social Customer Manifesto sidebar as well.)

LOHAS: Locked And Loaded

Next Thursday and Friday, I’m really looking forward to participating in the 10th LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) conference in Santa Monica. Speakers are going to include:

  • Steve Case – Revolution Living Chairman & AOL Co-Founder
  • Dominique Conseil – President, Aveda
  • Lynn Powers – President and COO, Gaiam
  • Paul Ray – Integral Partners and Author of Cultural Creatives
  • Niel Golightly – Director Sustainable Business Strategies, Ford Motor Company
  • Philippe Cousteau – EarthEcho International
  • Susan West Kurz – President, Dr. Hauschka Skincare
  • Laura Coblentz – VP Marketing, Wild Oats
  • Mark Spellun, Editor-in-Chief, Plenty Magazine
  • Rick Ridgeway – VP of Comm. & Env. Programs, Patagonia
  • Patrica Aburdene – Social Forcaster, Author
  • Gwynne Rogers – Strategic Marketing Consultant, Natural Marketing Institute
  • Steve French- Managing Partner, The Natural Marketing Institute
  • Peter David Pedersen – CEO, E-Square
  • Carol Atwood – Spartacus Media
  • Lawrence Comras – CEO, Greenhome.com
  • Paul Stamets- Mycologist, Author, Inventor & Founder of Fungi Perfecti

(Disclosure: I’ll be there supporting Cerado’s relationships with EarthHealers and Blue Marble.)

Bonus: Anyone interested in going to Belize to learn firsthand about jungle survival?

Facebook Gets $25MM In Funding

The hits just keep on coming. Facebook has landed an additional $25MM in funding, and Bambi Francisco is reporting that the pre-money valuation of Facebook was $525MM.

(via nick)

UPDATE: Matt Marshall has more on the Facebook deal here. The key strategy bits:

“Facebook has only “scratched the surface” on its efforts to expand in new markets, including international and post-graduate communities. Facebook launched a product for high schools last year, and recently launched a version of its site for mobile devices. It also introduced photo-sharing several months ago. Facebook’s Deitch said comScore data shows Facebook is the largest photo-sharing site on the Web

The company will eventually turn to developing three revenue streams, [Greylock’s] Sze said. Those include local advertisers, such as pizza companies or bookstores that want to post an ad for a local college audience; banner advertisers seeking to reach Facebook’s demographic type nationally; and sponsored groups, such as large companies sponsoring an online forum to interact with students.”

MySpace For The Office

Nice piece from BusinessWeek’s Steve Rosenbush today: MySpace For The Office.

I have a feeling we’re definitely going to see the enterprise social networking market heat up in the next six to twelve months; Visible Path’s $17million in financing mentioned in the article is going to be just the beginning.

Congrats to Antony Brydon and the rest of the team.

Bonus link: A MySpace For Business