Tulisan 1
The
Economics Of Free
One
of the most interesting and unique economic phenomenon to emerge over the last
10 years is the impact of technology in creating products that are free to the
consumer. The most unique aspect of this business model is that it generates
tremendous profits for those who know how to use it correctly. However, the
rapid acceleration of technology has enabled a business model centered around
offering products, services, and content that is free to the end consumer. The
cost per unit of computing power effectively drops in half every 18 months.
This means that the cost of providing a product or service to an individual
customer rapidly drops to very near zero. Thus, companies who have already built
out a technology infrastructure can provide products and services at a very
nominal cost. The thing that enables this model is the freedom from content
containers such as books, DVD’s, phones, tablets, or some other device for
holding or storing content. By specializing in software based technology
products, companies can capture all of the cost advantages offered by Moore’s
Law without being constrained by the cost of containers for their content. For
example Google creates free access. This model is very similar to traditional
television, but offers the ability for advertisers to narrow down their
customer base much more finely than is available through the broad-brush of
television advertisement. An adjacent business model that has spawned from this
paradigm that is quickly challenging the traditional model of using copyright
protection to restrict content distribution. In this model, you capture value
not by marketing to customers in hopes that they will buy, but by attracting
customers to you because of superior content and capturing value through
relationships with advertisers and affiliates that pay a commission for access
to customers who have been pre-qualified by accessing your content. The
opportunity for web marketers comes from creating outstanding content that is
appropriately optimized for search visibility to draw customers to your
website, then sell access to that population of customers to advertisers and
affiliates. In the end, this phenomenon of ‘free’ is continuing to shape the
online marketplace and is expected to produce the infrastructure for even more
new business models to emerge in the future. It represents a new paradigm that
will pose tremendous problems to people and companies entrenched in the status
quo and great opportunities to those who understand and leverage this new
business model.
