Every recession tells us the same story – that castles can’t be built on thin air. But each time we recover from a recession, the smartest and brightest get back to building one. And the herd follows. They get themselves to believe that the castle is for real. Unfortunately, the fact that some people make disproportionate sums of money by distributing the illusion sparks off a chain. However, the truth is that castles are also built with bricks. And it’s only when you’ve built the castle that you’d be able to experience the pleasure of staying in one. Also, nothing beats the joy of creation.

The 4 best Freemium Models as detailed on this post by Chris Anderson on The Long Tail Blog. He has detailed these with Pros and Cons.

1. Time limited (30 days free, then pay. e.g. Salesforce)
2. Feature limited (basic version free, more sophisticated version paid. e.g. WordPress)
3. Seat limited (can be used by up to some number of people for free, but more than that is paid. e.g. QuickBooks)
4. Customer type limited (small and young companies get it free, bigger and older companies pay. e.g. Microsoft’s BizSpark)

TED Talk by Chris Anderson (Wired): Technology’s Long Tail (Feb 2004)

And if you haven’t yet read the book, do check these links:
Wired article on The Long Tail (Oct 2004)
Chris Anderson’s Blog – The Long Tail

• They don’t really end up getting you multiple loan/insurance offers as they promise. Most of them sell the leads to banks on an exclusivity basis and erase the very purpose of their existence.
• They don’t focus on organic traffic and rely heavily on getting traffic through Google Adwords and ad networks. And thus are functioning as arbitrage businesses. With the kind of volumes online, the arbitrage model can not be justified.
• The consumer side of the product is just a bunch of forms. So absolutely anyone and everyone tries to get into this business relying on Google Adwords to get their leads. Try running a search for Personal+Loan+Mumbai and see the number of advertisers vying for presence. I saw 17 of them. This means that the already thin volumes get further distributed. What it also means is that the bidding for keywords is high, hiking up the cost per acquisition.
• The quality of leads is pathetic. Most people who fill forms on these sites are those who have already tried and failed to get one through other channels.

Yes, that’s how I’d like to see my enterprise shaping up. 1 Person Per Business. Everything else would be outsourced. While dependency and continuity are the challenges presented by such a model, there are ways to go around it. For a moment let’s assume that those challenges are tackled and we could go ahead with a 1 Person Per Business Model. It makes life so much simpler. People then can be truly empowered and transformed into business owners. And you don’t even lose out on all the fun of a small well-knit team. Moreover, you get to work with people who make you smarter.