Summary book 'free' - 50 business models for 'free'

Free 1: Direct cross-subsidies

• Give away services, selling products (the Genius Bar in the Apple stores where users get free technical support)
• Give away products, retail services (such as free gifts you open a bank account)
• Give away software, selling hardware (the Linux offerings IBM and HP)
• Give away hardware, sell the software (the model of the console for video games, with devices like the Xbox 360 far sold below cost)
• Give away mobile phones, sales call minutes (most providers)
• Provide minutes away, selling mobile phones (many of same suppliers, but with free calls evenings and weekends)
• Give the show away, sell the potions (comic tents)
• Give the drinks away, sell the show (casinos)
• Give something away for something else to sell (advertising stunts shopkeepers)
• Get two, pay one (supermarkets)
• Free gift included (breakfast foods)
• Free samples (everything from gift boxes to product demonstrations at the supermarket)
• Free samples (magazine subscriptions)
• Free parking (shopping)
• Free spices (restaurants)

Free 2: Three-party market or 'bilateral' market (one user support another)

• Give away content, selling access to public (By ad-supported media)
• Give away free credit card membership fees, calculate a transaction fee to merchants
• Provide scientific papers for free, lets authors pay for its publication (Public Library of Science)
• Give away document readers, document writers pay (Adobe)
• Provide free access of women, let men pay (discos)
• Give children free admission, older adults are charged (museums)
• Give the application away, selling premium search options (Match.com)
• Sell the registration, the search is for free(craigslist New York Housing)
• Enter the service road trip, ask about fees and rental car reservations (Travelocity)
• Let sellers pay for the stock of their stuff, let people shop for free (slotting fees in supermarkets)
• Let people pay for access to the store, give the stock road space for sellers (stores with membership works, such as Costco)
• Provide door-to-buy ads away, selling mortgages (Zillow)
• Give away content, sell marketing information about customers (Practice Fusion)
• Give away content, earn money by people to refer to shops (Amazon Associates)
• Provide content away, selling stuff (Slashdot / Th inkGeek)
• Give away content, pay advertisers to occur (Product placement)
• Provide jobs or housing sections for free, let people pay for registration (Craigslist)
• Give away content and data to consumers, allows companies pay for access via an API (eBay)
• Give "green" ideas for homes away, let builders contractors and pay for registration as a green entrepreneur (FreeGreen.com)

Free 3: Freemium (single user support the rest)

• Provide basic information for free, selling more extensive information in user-friendly form (BoxOffi ceMojo)
• Provide software for federal taxes for free aks money for state taxes (TurboTax)
• Provide low-quality MP3s for free, selling box sets of high quality (Radiohead)
• Give away content on the web, sell printed content (all of magazine and books)
• Give away games, working with a paid subscription for certain advantages in the game who wants to get (Club Penguin)
• Give away entry in a list of companies away, let companies pay for the 'claim' and better listing of their company (Brown Book)
• Provide demonstration software for free, let the full version pay (Most video games, where your first few levels can play for free to see if it works for you is)
• Provide free calling from computer to computer, sell phone calls from computer to phone (Skype)
• Provide services for sharing photos away, require money for extra storage (Flickr)
• Basic software for free, selling additional opportunities (Apple QuickTime)
• Free version with advertisements, selling the ability to remove those ads (Ning)
• Give 'text snippets' away, selling books (publishers using Google Book Search)
• Give away virtual tourism, sell virtual land (Second Life)
• Give a music game away, selling music tracks (Tap Tap Revolution)

See also: Business Model