Comments on: Why Free Is a Bad Price

By: Why Free is a Bad Price, American Airlines Edition « Donald Marron

Why Free is a Bad Price, American Airlines Edition « Donald Marron — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:48:40 +0000

[...] consumption. Marco Arment of Instapaper, for example, discovered that a zero price attracted “undesirable customers” for his app. And AT&T famously discovered that offering unlimited iPhone data could [...]

By: Jane Quatam

Jane Quatam — Wed, 11 May 2011 23:04:53 +0000

@Anthony, I think you are missing the point. Words have specific meanings, hence free means both without cost and unencumbered. This “app” was neither. To call it “free” is deceptive, and then to use this as example of the “costs of free pricing models” is either deceitful or naive.

The app authors regret is more a sign of the frail psychology of the creative, than indicative of any useful economic understanding. Its like studying the disemboweled intestines of a small animal in order to know whether you will win the next battle, very useless but it makes you feel like you understand an uncertain world with certainty.

By: Anthony Lazaro

Anthony Lazaro — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:28:02 +0000

@Jane I think you are missing the point, which is “Free” pricing models have costs that are often overlooked. These costs are additional support, higher tech costs, cannibolization of the paid app, a less loyal customer base, etc. The author of the app says “the paid app was better,” but continues to make the point of why he should have simply just never offered it in the first place.

@Donald — Thanks for posting. I love hearing about owners “lessons learned.” May even include a post on my blog about this…

By: Bil

Bil — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:08:10 +0000

I have a free app that works and doesn’t subject you to ads. I email myself the link to the stories that I don’t have time or eyesight to read.

By: Jane Quatam

Jane Quatam — Sun, 01 May 2011 19:04:44 +0000

Free isn’t free if you force people to endure advertising for their “free” object of desire. Advertising by and large cheapens discourse, cheapens experience and diminishes the value of the object providing the advertising. Who would put television and the polio vaccine in the same category of remarkable and world changing technologies?

Television, Radio, Billboards are all diminished by the content they host which is predominantly commercial advertising. I would value an application which forced me to endure a perpetual stream of advertising drivel much less, than one that didn’t.

Hence I see a flaw in the author of the apps reasoning, his advertising supported app is less valuable and of lesser quality therefore it should receive much lower reviews.

Free with an enormous flaw (annoying advertising) is not really free nor is it the same as the paid app, the entire premise is flawed, deceptive and specious.

Sometimes free is not really free, like a free lunch or a free app.