A new kind of freemium: Give away the whole, sell the pieces | Hacker News Reader

A new kind of freemium: Give away the whole, sell the pieces

statsheet.com

58 pointsmitrca26 comments

He lets you access the sports stats on his site for free, but he charges for the ability to embed stats in your site. I just wanted to get that out in case you saw the "new" in the title and got excited.

Edit: I just know someone is going to ask for an example, http://www.ibegin.com

Hmm yeah, I think after reading it, I'd describe it as more: let people browse the website for free, but sell access to the API.

But I'm not selling access to an API. I'm selling exactly the kind of data and content found on the site.

Yes, but that is your implementation of the freemium model. There are other sites, including my example, that allow free access to their data on the site, but then sell the data (in one form or another). You use embedded stats, iBegin uses datasets, other companies might charge for their API.

You are highlighting how my example is different from the others :-)

I'm actually highlighting how your business model is just a single execution of a broader method of conducting business. However, in the sense that your end product differs from the other examples, yes. If you really want it that bad.

Why do you think an API can't expose exactly the kind of data and content found on a site?

Another example would be Wolfram|Alpha. The site is free, but the iPhone app, and API access are quite expensive.

That's not how I read it. He will let you embed the stats from his site for free, but its going to have his branding/ads and you can only show the views he offers. If you want a different segment of data or to remove the branding, you'll have to pay.

So for example, he may let you embed a stat sheet about all NFL teams, but if you want one with just the Eagles, you'll have to pay. This is what he means by "giving away the whole thing, and charging for the pieces."

Its actually a really sharp idea, especially for this niche. Kudos to the author.

The main app is free (and he plans to sell advertising on it later) but downstream services (like an off-site widget) are premium. That's a successful business model to be sure, but hardly novel.

That's a much more generic description of the model. I'm talking about a specific type of "main app" and a specific type of "downstream service"

We recently started to branch in this direction as well, however, it was rather inadvertent. A much larger website was interested in having our planning features from http://ridewithgps.com on their site, but didn't want to budget their own coders to implement it. We are in the process of negotiating a contract, which is turning out to be fairly lucrative for our small startup.

So, this works both large and small; just like Google Maps, you can give away some bits for free but if anyone wants to use your product in a way that will financially benefit them, they kick you a license fee.

This is similar to the revenue model of Spiceworks. It is a free application available to download, but besides just ad revenue it also sells out (gets 'sponsors') for features added via their plugin architecture.

They are basically selling out portions of their functionality work flow to advertisers and giving away the application as a platform.

I don't see anything new here.

Actually, it reminded me of an example from an audiobook I listened to a few months ago about the Freemium model.

There was an example of one of the first Gillette's marketing campaigns. Basically, they gave away blades for free but to use them you had to buy a razor.

That example is definitely not similar to the StatSheet model. I'm talking about selling pieces of a free web site. You can't use the razor without buying the blades.

Does your sports data provider get a cut from this? It looks like you are reselling their data.

Uh, how is this new? Kodak used to give away cameras so you'd buy film.

mitrca,

off-topic, but i'm having trouble building a chart on your site, and was wondering if it's even possible:

Your site is great at showing season long stats, but what if I want to show specific opponents.

This week, for example, is the Duke-UNC game. Is there a way to trend stats specific just for Duke vs. UNC?

Interesting to think of software-as-a-service similar to the "virtual goods" model economies growing in mobile, social, etc. . .

I think it's worth noting that games, which have driven the virtual goods business model, are essentially software as a service. The value you receive from the service is entertainment.

What prevents someone from doing a screen capture or content scrape of your data and posting it to their website?

Are you geared up to start sending out cease and desist notices to every chump with a myspace account who happens to like sports and knows how to use pbrush and ALT+Print Screen.

Good luck but it seems too easily to rape your content and leave you holding the legal bill for a fight you can't win.

You're basically attacking every freemium model that sells data as their product. This isn't unique to his idea.

How is that different than screen capturing any website and posting to Myspace?? This is an issue (not really) for any website.

And there are no legal issues if someone does this to my content.

The scenario you are describing would hardly hit what would otherwise be paying customers. If he is still profitable, then the only problem is that the pirates are getting something for free which, from a business point of view, is irrelevant.

I'm not attacking every freemium model out there.. just one that involves sports that have a large percentage of fanatic fans and their favorite teams stats . Other models don't have the same potential for copyright violation.

The idea and technology being used is great I just think there may be an enormous legal battle ahead should the site and service become very popular.

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