Can membership programs apply Internet business models?
Posted by Gayle Gifford on July 10, 2009 in Big ideas, Fundraising, Good reads, Strategic Thinking
“Give away one thing to create demand for another.” That’s the online business strategy discussed in Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine.
I had to stop my car so as not to miss all of Terry Gross’s interview with Anderson on NPR’s Fresh Air Wednesday, July 8th.
Now bear with me as I share a bit of my un-edited thinking as I was listening to the interview. (Why is it that I can’t resist exploring complex analogies on Friday afternoons?)
Anderson described how businesses are making money on the Internet by giving things away for free. I was particularly enthralled because the strategy he was describing — give the basic level away for free and then charge for the premium model — seemed to align with the radical museum membership program envisioned by Beverly Sheppard and John Falk in their 2006 book Thriving in the Knowledge Age: New business models for museums and cultural organizations from Alta Mira Press.
In their book, Falk and Sheppard ask why museums (and zoos, et al) discount prices for repeat users and thus receive the least proportional revenue from their best customers. In the commonly used nonprofit Read More >>