Feel “free” – try before you buy
Quick, scroll through your iTunes – how many of those songs did you pay for? I’ve burned every Hold Steady CD from friends who beat me to the record store, but I’d like to think I make up for my thrift by buying tickets for their homecoming gigs – and even bought my favorite t-shirt at one of the band’s First Ave shows. Eventually, we vote with our dollars for stuff we like.
Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail,” has again landed on the New York Times Bestseller list – this time by putting the premise of his latest book, “Free,” to practice by inviting thousands of freeloaders to download it. “The point was to let people sample the book in full,” said Anderson. “If they liked it, we hoped that some would buy the hardcover to keep or at least spread the word.”
And yeah, “Free” found its way into my summer reading via the ol’ five-finger discount, but here I am spreading the word.
Reading the New York Times online is free, but to me the better bargain is having the (now six-dollar) dead-tree Sunday edition strewn about my couch for the rest of the week. Well-worth reading is the Ping column of last Sunday’s Times (Business section, page 4) about Evernote, a free web application that lets users make and keep notes from web clips, voice memos, business cards, pictures, videos and more – with the ability to retrieve data from multiple devices.
(Disclosure: The Nerdery helped develop parts of Evernote’s forthcoming revamped website, along with design agency partners Factor Design.)
Even though three-fourths of Evernote users quit it cold turkey, the company is betting that as more people use it to organize their constantly accumulating data, the more members will pay for account enhancements like more storage and being able to scan PDF notes to find a certain word. It stands to reason that the more notes a user puts in for free, the likelier they’ll be to pay to more easily extract the data that drives their personal and professional life.
“Free is not a loss leader,” said Evernote chief executive Phil Libin to NY Times columnist Damon Darlin. “If we can get a small percentage of users to pay we start to make money…We are committed to being free.”
Me too – if it’s free, I’m free to do it.
