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That’s what a local appliance store used to advertise, until it found itself in Chapter 11.

Chris Anderson is editor in chief of Wired magazine. His next book is FREE. It is about the idea of “free” in the old and new economies. Wired has posted an excerpt titled Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

I buy into the idea. Cell phone carriers make their bucks from “minutes,” so why charge for the handset? Ink Jet printer manufactures profits come from ink, so why charge for printers?

My advice to manufactures of products that use consumables is give the product away.

My advice to service providers is to stuff start up fees, and automatically upgrade existing customers to the same level of product, services, and pricing that new customers enjoy, without any fees.

Following my advice, manufactures and service providers will retain a loyal customer base longer.

Will they follow my advice? Some do and some will. Others suffer from myopia, hung up on short-term profits, and keep asking the question “Where’s the profit in that?”

…John

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Business, Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.