In the beginning I defined a freemix publisher and gave an example of someone making a living at it.

Building on that I defined a freemix business model:

The freemix business model is to give away products and/or services and to make money from activities related to doing so.

But what are examples of the freemix business model?

In his book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”, Chris Anderson gives “50 Business Models” built on his concept “Free.”

His “Free” concept business models include freemix business models (see note below) as I realized when I looked at his examples to see if I could find some examples of freemix.

I was glad I did because they made me realize my definition of the freemix business model was sloppy. So here is the new, better definition:

The freemix business model is for the producer of products and/or services to give them away and to make money from activities related to doing so.

The crucial addition are the words “the producer.”

I had them in mind when I wrote down the definition but “in mind” butters no biscuits if you don’t write it down.

The main points to come out of this examination of the “Free” examples are that, for “freemix:”

1. as I said, it has to be the producer of the products and/or services giving them away.
2. to give away means the price is set to absolutely zero.
   
3. related to doing so means the money-making activities are connected to the product/services in some way.

A special case of freemix is “freemium,” which is defined this way:

The freemium business model is for the producer of a product/service to give away a complete basic product/service and to make money from selling premium upgrades.

Chris Anderson defines it the same way in Chapter 2 of his book. He writes: “Within the broad world of cross-subsidies, Free models tend to fall into four main categories:” and “freemium” is the third of those four.

So there we are. The freemium business model is a special case of the freemix business model which is a subset of the “Free” business models.

In these examples of freemix, a subset of Mr. Anderson’s “Free” examples,  I have marked with a double asterisk freemium examples.

Real World examples:

• “Give away the show, sell drinks (strip clubs).”

Digital World examples:

• “Give away listings, sell premium search (Match.com)”
• “Give away on-line games, charge a subscription to do more in the game (Club Penguin)” **
• “Give away free photo-sharing services, charge for additional storage space (Flickr)” **
• “Give away basic software, sell more features (Apple QuickTime) **
• “Give away ad-supported services, sell the ability to remove the ads (Ning)”
• “Give away virtual tourism, sell virtual land (Second Life)” **

The rest of the examples are “Free” but not “freemix” or I couldn’t work out whether they fell into the freemix category with the available description.

Note: Why the “freemix” business models are a subset of the “Free” business models.

One example (in the Real World) of “Free” is ‘”Free condiments” (restaurants)’ which is not freemix because the producer of the condiments is not giving away the condiments and making money by doing so.

If it were the owner of the restaurant giving away the meals and charging for the condiments that would be freemix.

It’s harder to find an example in the digital world that doesn’t fit because “freemix” works so well there, since the incremental Real World costs of producing digital world products/services are very low (effectively free – free is an asymptote, but still).

The next question is – can we build on the freemix business model to create a definition of a freemix economy?

The Real World via twitter (why posts end in retweets):

RT quote @Not_For_Sale Joint UN-Timorese Police Operation Smashes Human Trafficking Ring #humantrafficking http://shar.es/6HkQ