Especially in the online world, you see a lot of companies that offer products for free. How do they make money doing that?

In this episode, we dive into the economics of free products and examine three different business models where companies make money while offering a product for free. We look a the following:

You Are The Product

For services such as Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn, the user is the product, and advertisers are the actual customers.

Freemium: Free Product with Paid Upgrades

From games to Candy Crush and FortNite to services like DropBox and software like Slack, Zoom, and GitHub, many companies by make money by offering a free version of their software and then offering additional features that you have to pay for.

Land and Expand: Free Entry to a Paid Ecosystem

Hubspot offers a fully featured free CRM system to its users, but if they want to expand into the other products which integrate with it (MarkingHub, ServiceHub, OperationsHub, etc.) the cost can increase rapidly.

It’s a lengthy investigation of the economics of free. And, as always, I hope that if you enjoy the episode you’ll share it with your friends. It’s the best way for us to find new users.

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