Buying the Cow When You Get the Milk for Free

Who wants to buy the cow when they get the milk for free?

Apparently I do, because I recently upgraded my Evernote account to premium, officially taking my first step into the cow-buying-after-free-milk-getting realm of online startups.

That got me thinking about the whole idea of monetization of online services in an increasingly accessible world. With so many mobile apps and networks out there, companies have to ask themselves more and more if and what to charge for their services.

On one hand, having a free service means there's no risk for people curious to try it out. And the more people you have actually trying the service, the better the chance that they'll adopt it for the long-term. But on the other hand, free services have a harder time making money. Sure, you can sell ad space, but you run the risk of diluting the experience for the user and losing that adoption rate.

I remember seeing a study back in July that showed the percentage of people who would be willing to pay for Twitter should they stop offering the service for free: 0%. I know we're dealing with some complex statistics here, so I'll break those numbers down: Nobody is willing to pay for Twitter.

Sarcasm aside, that study did provide an important lesson for startups. Given the same features and relatively same user experience, users are not willing to start paying for a service they already had access to for free.

That's why I like this emerging trend of the freemium service, where a startup offers a basic version of their service for free but has upgradeable options. There was an article recently about Evernote's freemium business model and how the free note-taking service is now a $10 million dollar business.

For developers and investors, stories like this are great because it shows there is indeed a market for online services, even if they're offered for free. For consumers, it's great because that means we should continue to see innovative services.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that if people really like the milk, they'll be willing to buy the cow either way.

Are Long Posts Finally Acceptable?

For years, the rule of thumb for anything you post online had been "keep it short and sweet." Videos had to be less than 2 minutes, blog posts had to be a couple paragraphs maximum, even legitimate news organizations had been shaving down their online articles to keep pace with our short attention spans.

Here's the problem...I talk a lot, I admit it. And if I really get into a story, it tends to turn into something resembling a novel more than a blog post.

Normally, those long-winded blog posts would have me concerned that my readers might get bored and move on halfway through a story. But just like we saw a cultural shift from longer newspaper-style articles to short Twitter-esque posts, we are now seeing the pendulum swing a little more the other way with a renewed focus on lengthier stories.

One innovation we have to thank for this is the rise of bookmarking apps and websites like Instapaper and Evernote that allow people to easily bookmark stories to read later. The way they work is simple; you see an article you like but don't have time to read it (or are working and shouldn't read it) so you send the link to one of these services and you can read them from your computer or smartphone when you have the time.

I've been using both Instapaper and Evernote for a few weeks now and it's been great for me as a reader, but they are even more important to me as a writer, That's because they open the door for me and every other blogger out there to write more in-depth. The reality is that it's extremely difficult to analyze anything in two or three paragraphs, and this emerging trend of social bookmarking alleviates the pressure.

So there you have it, a long-winded post about how it's okay to write long-winded posts.