Editor Chris Anderson of Wired magazine talks about retail, services & parts of digital content being FREE in the digital 2.0 world.
"Free is a psychology" -- indeed.
In the book, Anderson talks about the long-time practice of giving something away to get long-term customers. Anderson feels this is what periodicals and some OTHER INDUSTRIES will have to do in a more competitive climate going forward.
"Why $0.00 is the Future of #Business"
FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson <http://ow.ly/hV4s> < --- online version requires Flash.
Wired MAGAZINE Article at: <http://ow.ly/hUXN>
See the Anderson interview on Charlie Rose at <http://ow.ly/hUVX>
Funny, the people at Reliable Home (a Design/ Build Company in the western suburbs of Chicago) "give away" architectural design services, and it actually gains them more prospects/customers. It's also funny how naive those same people are in thinking that the services Reliable provides are "Free" -- when in fact Reliable charges them 2-3 times more money in the end (than if they had gone the traditional route of hiring a separate architect, contractor, etc.) He's basically advocating using an inducement (or loss-leader in retail) to increase your prospect counts (which turns into customers/clients.)
Anderson is right about the psychology of "FREE". It does work.
There is also a free MP3 (iTunes) audiobook version.
<http://ow.ly/hVdv> <- Free Audio MP3 Book
(When is "FREE" not free? when it's a paperback at Amazon for $27. )
Interesting discussion..
(Dinkyshop tried giving away free iPhone wallpapers etc.. had mixed results.. My website sgrantdesign.com though, has proven Anderson's argument.)
Susan G.