bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Freemium works by providing a base service free, their tiers of service at a premium.

Flickr is an early example of this, use their service for free, upload a decent amount of photos a month.  Premium service offers increased upload for heavy users and photo sets (as well as a nice little badge).

I’d like to see more of this in day to day life:

• Free bus rides as long as you stand.  Pay a premium for seating, can even tier the seating offering a more comfortable seat.
• Do the same with trains, free to stand, pay for seating.
• Free broadband as long as you use the modified browser which earns revenue from all searches.  Pay for access to unlimited Facebook & YouTube or pay for backups, file sharing mode.

Offering something for free offers a great lead in and conversation for your customers.

It also paves the way for more customers through the doors, however you do have to be smart and ensure there is the upsell, as without it you are just catering to freeloaders.

What free models would you like to see? Or have seen? Be great to hear from you…

I did a radio interview this morning and one of the questions was how does an idea become a chapter in the book.

Well it has actually gone through a few filters, as you may know from my Great but not great enough post that is the first big filter.

For every blog post that makes it about 3 don’t.  So for the 300 or odd so posts that are live, about 900 haven’t.

Then for those that made it live, the filter was based on popularity, my personal favourites and relevance.

By the time it has made it to the book, it has gone through three filters, at each step ideas have been refined, questioned, and put back together.

All I am doing is providing a series of filters, where at each step the most remarkable stuff makes it through and the rest drops off.

This is all that YouTube does, or that email newsletter, or the people you follow on twitter.  They provide a filtered view of the mass content.  By following and engaging you get access to the end result.

So what do you filter for your customers? Can you deliver filtered (and relevant) content do your audience as a way of engaging? For if you can, you’re customers will love you for it.

What is the rule of three?

Well if you’re ever asking yourself what should I charge for my time? Figure out what you’d like to earn then multiple it by three.

Why? Well it is all too easy to under price yourself (way too easy).  We often forget the initial meeting we had, the two hours putting together a proposal, the time cost of getting to and from meetings, not to even mention fuel costs, calling, hardware and our own intellectual property.

This rule helps you avoid falling into the trap of being too cheap, over time you will get a feel of your market rate but use this as a baseline to start from.

By now you will have received a number of posts from the blog which I’m sure you are enjoying (over 300 since day 1 in fact!)

Often it’s not the post itself but what you take away from the ideas that provide the most value. A conversation, a new idea, something you can implement in your own life.

That’s the real kick I get, stimulating new thought that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Blogs are fantastic in providing fresh content each and every day – however the restriction is how do I expose some of the classics to new readers? So what I have done is included some of them below.

The Most Popular Posts (ever)
You Can do what YOU Want
Why Entrepreneurs should go to university
12 Hour Startup
bwagy marketing manifesto
Free Marketing Advice Pay What You Want

Most Controversial
You Can do what YOU Want
Why Entrepreneurs should go to university
Five Star Service
12 Hour Startup
Remarkable Content is like a drug

My Personal Favourites
You Can Do What You Want
You are Always Wrong
Are you made of rubber?
How I am tipping the book model
Fifteen Percent on
bwagy Networking Theory

And any post on Kiva /tag/kiva/

Selling out on your customers. Delivering sub par service.

It’s easy to take a shortcut, cut corners to get the short term win…. But it’s not attractive…

Not attractive to your current; prospective or past customers.

You can may win them back.  But at what cost?

I daresay it’s less than the windfall from your original shortcut…

Between working on your business versus working in your business.

It’s the same with your career, idea or goal.  There are always elements of getting the job done versus the oversight view figuring out new ways of doing things.

Now this is the delicate balance between the two, how much do you do of each? Some people resign to do all the doing and others to do all the thinking… either or isn’t that hard (nor inferior).  Whatever keeps you happy.

But for those that need to do both (case in point small business owner) how do you strike the balance? I haven’t found a solid rule but my personal guideline (as it is for all goals) is today better than yesterday? Am I little bit closer to my goal? Each day I want to inch closer.

For all those small changes really add up.

At the least I need to do a little bit each and every day working on my business versus in it.  Some days I hit the sweet spot others I miss it.  As long as it is a bit better and I am increasing momentum I’m happy.

To be honest even that’s not easy to get that little bit each and every day what I can share is that over time it gets easier.  Hang in there, focus on the vision, keep chipping away at it.

Easy all you have to do is pop over to Amazon and add to the discussion on The Best Ideas are Free, I will randomly pick a winner Wednesday week (the 23rd).  Will ship you a signed copy of the book anywhere in the world.  Can post as many time as you want to increase chances.

For the new readers (and old) just wanted to remind you what else you can get from me:

You can read the blog each and everyday for free (it is my absolute pleasure to do so). (remember to check the archives in the bottom left menu, there are now over 300 posts!)

You can also check out some manifestos that I have put together in the past for free as well.

Heck you can even read my first book online for free.

Check out all of the above, the marketing manifesto is a must read and of course the book draws everything together.

However what I do charge for is my physical book, if you like the rest, check it out.  I don’t need to sell you on the benefits of reading a book but the key thing is it makes it real – once you hold it in your hand the ideas take a different shape.

Thanks to Brett Roberts (Chief Technology Office, Microsoft NZ) for reminding me of this video, give it a watch it is 20 minutes long but well worth it.

Update: Video broke the blog so view it here on TED.com.

I just want to clarify (since I share ideas each and every day) an idea alone isn’t a business.

A business is a collection of ideas, executed in a fashion that generates profit.

An amazing idea helps a business spread, it forms the messages, builds the word of mouth but it is the collection of ideas and systems executed that make the business.  In essence an amazing idea provides a wave for the business to ride but that wave is short lived unless you have something behind it…

You need to take your amazing idea and mix it up with some others (usually standardised ideas) to turn it into a business.  Then you have something of amazing value.

You can virtually test anything and everything online… there is amazing amounts of tools available to measure different things.

Measure traffic? Use Google Analytics (#1 if you don’t have basic traffic measurement installed please bang head against wall – it should be an assumption.)

Want to do Brand Monitoring? Check out Techrigy (Google Alerts on steroids)

Usability and heat maps? Use CrazyEgg (it beats Google Analytics Heatmaps hands down.

Measure E-Commerce? Set up Google Analytics Goals (and figure out where your business comes from).

Measure blog subscribers? Use Feedburner.

Find out more about your audience demographics? Use Quantcast & Crowdscience.

Want to find out which design / slogan/ offer creates the most business? Use A/B testing with Google Website Optimiser.

Use these to test your assumptions, tweak and improve again.  The web is a huge incubator for evolution or products to happen, so get evolving.

If you have any others feel free to share below in the comments…

A while back as a Monday Ideas Post I shared my idea for a quick feedback form, you can view the original post here and the republished post on the NZHerald (where it was hugely controversial).

As a quick summary I suggested that stores add a device to collect quick feedback on your experience.  You could even integrate into the eftpos machine to hasten the process.

I was delighted to be greeted by this in a duty free store whilst away on holiday.

How neat! A quick screen to let me provide some simple feedback.  From the state of the machine I could tell it was well used.

Airports are a double sided coin as customers are only likely to visit a few times, so it’s harder to collect feedback (but you have a location monopoly so average service can prevail).

Some readers mentioned they had seen some in the original post but just wanted to share…

#15 Follow up (and stay in your customers frame of reference)
Follow up! and follow up consistently. Remind your past clients what you offer, see if you can help them. One client of mine went through a court case so had no funds for several months. We cut the project back, I offered to help pro bono, if they kept writing blog posts I would keep putting them up, thus ensuring they maintained return on investment. You think that client is ever going to leave me?

#16 Think Long Term
Clients are for the long term. Do not rip them off, burn their business. Repeat clients pay more and earn you more due to efficiencies.

#17 Clients as your sales team
Clients are your best sales people, so look after them, obsess about their business, recommend their product to others.

Sure the sales pitch work – it converts – generates dollars.  But do you show your human side?

You see having a real relationship with your customers means when things get tough they will hang in there (and vice versa).  Having strong relations creates a real loyalty and following.

Think of all the hoo haa around Apples products every 18 months and yet their dedicated users hang in there, why?  They have a strong relationship with the company.  And who would want to leave that?

It’s easy for someone to say you should be doing blogging, or tweeting or vlogging…

You can’t.

You see you ought to zoom in on what you’re good at.

If you’re not good at writing – don’t write.

If you’re not good in front of the camera – don’t do it.

No time for tweeting – don’t do it.

There is ZERO value in using a tool if you don’t do it well.  Let me repeat that – zero value.  If you’re in the space you need to own it.

It’s the same old business principle, 80/20 analysis of what you’re good at, then push that button and keep pressing it.  That’s the smartest form of leverage.