activex 缺点
“The problem with free is that every time you double the size of your database the cost of maintaining the site grows 6 fold,” says Markus Frind, the founder and CEO of Plentyoffish.com, a wildly successful dating site that makes a lot money by giving away for free what other sites charge for. But even for users who ultimately charge for their product there can be a downside to giving something away for free.
Plentyoffish.com的创始人兼首席执行官Markus Frind说： “免费的问题在于，每当数据库规模扩大一倍时，维护该网站的成本就会增加6倍。”通过免费赠送其他网站收费。 但是，即使对于最终为其产品收费的用户，免费赠送某些东西也有不利的一面。
Frind’s site, of course, is using an ad-based business model, which is becoming harder to support in today’s shaky economy, so charging for your product might be a safer way to go. One of the most popular free-centric business models is the freemium model, in which base versions of products are given away for free, and more feature rich versions are charged for. The idea is that enough people will pony up for the fancy edition to pay for all the freeloaders, and turn a profit.
当然，Frind的网站使用的是基于广告的商业模式，在当今动荡的经济环境中，这种模式变得越来越难以支持 ，因此对产品收费可能是一种更安全的方法。 最流行的以自由为中心的业务模型之一是免费增值模型 ，其中免费提供基本版本的产品，并收取更多功能丰富的版本的费用。 这个想法是，足够多的人会花钱购买高级版本，以支付所有免费下载程序的费用，并从中获利。
However, if Frind is right about ballooning costs as your user base doubles, even the freemium model has pitfalls.
但是，如果Frind认为随着您的用户群增加一倍，气球成本增加是正确的，那么即使是免费增值模式也存在陷阱。
Let’s do some simplified math. Say your users cost you $1 each per user, per year for hosting, acquisition, support, etc. Let’s say you have 100 total users, which means you’ll pay $100 each year in costs. Assume that just 1% of the users you sign up will turn into paying users at $10 per month (a figure that comes from Ryan Carson of DropSend), which equals $120/year on those 100 users — so you’re above water.
让我们做一些简化的数学运算。 假设您的用户在托管，获取，支持等方面每人每年需要为您支付1美元。假设您的用户总数为100，这意味着您每年需要支付100美元的费用。 假设您注册的用户中只有1％会变成按每月10美元的价格向付费用户收费(该数字来自DropSend的Ryan Carson )，相当于这100个用户每年120美元-因此您处于水上生活。
Now scale up to 200 users. If Frind is correct, you’ll actually end up with $1,200 per year in costs — you’ve doubled your user base, so your costs go up six time to $6/user. Your conversion rate likely won’t, however, so you’ll have just 2 paying customers and revenue of $240 per year. You’re now way, way in the red. Even if Frind is exaggerating, and costs only go up 50% with every doubling of your user base, free can still wind up costing you money. In our example, if your costs up 50% with every doubling, when you hit 400 users, they’ll cost your $900 per year, but only bring in half that in revenue.
现在可以扩展到200个用户。 如果Frind是正确的，那么实际上您每年将最终获得1200美元的成本-您的用户群增加了一倍，因此您的成本增加了6倍，达到每位用户6美元。 但是，您的转化率可能不会，因此您只有2个付费客户，每年的收入为240美元。 您现在处于迷路状态。 即使Frind夸大其词，并且用户群每增加一倍，成本仅上涨50％，免费仍然会浪费您的钱。 在我们的示例中，如果您的费用每增加一倍就增加50％，那么当您达到400个用户时，他们每年将花费您900美元，但只能带来一半的收入。
Clearly, the math will be different for you — your per user costs might be lower, and the pricing on your app might be higher, and the costs might creep up at a slower pace. However, assuming costs do go up exponentially as you add more users, then it will eventually catch up to you. So the key is to up the conversion rate and if you can, to extract value from those free users.
显然，数学对您而言将有所不同–您的每用户成本可能会更低，应用程序的价格可能会更高，并且成本可能会以较慢的速度增长。 但是，假设随着您添加更多用户，成本确实成倍增加，那么最终它将赶上您。 因此，关键是提高转化率，并且，如果可以的话，从那些免费用户中获取价值。
The latter is what spam-filtering service Mollom is doing. Founder Dries Buytaert, who also founded the Drupal project, reports on his blog that Mollom is able to extract great value from the freeloaders on their system — who make up the vast majority of customers — by utilizing their input to make their paid product more useful.
后者就是Mollom的垃圾邮件筛选服务。 创办人Dries Buytaert(也创建了Drupal项目) 在他的博客中报告说，Mollom能够通过利用他们的系统中的免费装载程序(他们构成了绝大多数客户)来获取巨大价值，他们利用他们的输入使他们的付费产品更有用。
“We currently have more than 3,000 active users that use Mollom for free,” writes Buytaert. “Say each user spends on average 15 minutes a week moderating his site’s content and reporting classification errors to Mollom. Mollom learns from this feedback and automatically adjusts its spam filters so that all other Mollom users benefit from it. At a rate of $10 USD/hour, we get $390,000 USD worth of value from free users a year — 3,000 users x 15 minutes/week x 52 weeks/year x 10 USD/hour = $390,000 USD/year. If these numbers hold up, the value of a free Mollom user could be estimated at $130 USD/year. And that doesn’t include the marketing value they add.”
Buytaert写道：“我们目前有3,000多个免费使用Mollom的活跃用户。” “假设每个用户平均每周花费15分钟来审核其网站内容，并向Mollom报告分类错误。 Mollom从此反馈中学习并自动调整其垃圾邮件过滤器，以便所有其他Mollom用户都将从中受益。 以每小时10美元的费率，我们每年从免费用户中获得价值390,000美元的价值-3,000个用户x 15分钟/周x 52周/年x 10 USD /小时= 390,000美元/年。 如果这些数字保持不变，则免费的Mollom用户的价值估计为每年$ 130 USD。 而且这还不包括他们增加的营销价值。”
Mollom users add value that makes the service more attractive to paid customers and ups the chance that they might choose Mollom over competing services, such as Akismet. Of course Buytaert concedes that “the value of a free user probably declines as you get more of them and the business becomes stronger.”
Mollom用户增加了价值，使该服务对付费客户更具吸引力，并增加了他们可能会选择Mollom而不是Akismet等竞争服务的机会。 当然，Buytaert承认“随着用户数量的增加和业务的发展，免费用户的价值可能会下降。”
I believe he is referring to their marketing value — the more users you have, paid or free, the more potential brand ambassadors and the greater the chance of word-of-mouth success — but taken in context with Frind’s statement about costs skyrocketing with user numbers, the value of free users almost certainly declines the more of them you get.
我相信他指的是他们的营销价值-您拥有的，付费或免费的用户越多，潜在的品牌大使就越多，口碑成功的机会就越大-但在此背景下，弗里德(Frind)关于用户的成本飞涨的说法数字，免费用户的价值几乎肯定会随着您获得的更多而下降。
Extracting value in the way Mollom does from freeloaders is one way to raise the conversion ratio, but it won’t work for every business. The other way is the find the sweet spot for the free version that offers just enough to keep people interested, but not enough that they’ll never upgrade. Finding that sweet spot requires experimentation and knowing what people will pay for.
以Mollom从免费加载程序中获取价值的方式来提高转化率是一种方法，但它并非对所有企业都有效。 另一种方法是找到免费版本的最佳位置，该版本足以使人们保持兴趣，但不足以使他们永远不会升级。 找到最佳位置需要进行实验，并且知道人们会付出什么。
In August, I wrote a blog post titled “Better Than Free,” in which I printed advice from Michael Galpert, one of the founders of online image editing tool suite Aviary (our coverage), about what people will pay for. I’ll reprint that advice below.
8月，我写了一篇题为“ 比免费更好的博客”的博文，其中打印了在线图像编辑工具套件Aviary( 我们的报道 )的创始人之一迈克尔·加尔珀特(Michael Galpert)关于人们将支付的建议。 我将在下面转载该建议。
Convenience – People are lazy, says Galpert, which is why they’ll still pay for music tracks on iTunes, rather than get it from a P2P network. If you can offer them convenience over free alternatives, they’ll pay for it.
便利性 –人们很懒惰，Galpert说，这就是为什么他们仍然愿意在iTunes上为音乐曲目付费，而不是从P2P网络获得音乐。 如果您可以为他们提供免费替代方案带来的便利，则他们会为此付费。
Quality – Access to higher quality content, products, support, or community features is something that people are willing to pay for. If a subscription fee keeps spammers out of a forum and makes it more attractive to industry professionals, then people will be willing to pony up the dough, for example.
质量 –人们愿意为获得更高质量的内容，产品，支持或社区功能付费。 如果订阅费将垃圾邮件发送者拒之门外，并使其对行业专业人士更具吸引力，那么人们将愿意例如花钱买面团。
Additional Functionality – Galpert cites 37signals, who have pioneered the “freemium” model on the web by giving away a free appetizer, but charging for the full meal. The danger, as Allen Stern points out, is knowing how much to give out so that your pay product is still an attractive upgrade for enough users.
附加功能 – Galpert引用了37signals，后者通过提供免费的开胃菜，但收取全餐费用，率先在网络上推出了“免费增值”模式。 正如艾伦·斯特恩(Allen Stern)所指出的那样，危险在于知道要付出多少，这样您的付费产品仍然是足够用户吸引人的升级。
Customization – Customization is a great value-added feature for many products, and people are willing to pay for it. Galpert uses WordPress.com as an example. The site offers free blogs for anyone, but to customize the CSS or use your own domain name you have to fork over some cash.
定制 -定制是许多产品的重要增值功能，人们愿意为此付费。 Galpert以WordPress.com为例。 该网站为任何人提供免费博客，但是要自定义CSS或使用您自己的域名，您必须花一些钱。
Privacy – While privacy should be built into any service at any pay level, additional layers of privacy are something that people will pay for. Galpert talks about GoDaddy, which offers a premium service that allows people to mask their information on WHOIS searches.
隐私 –虽然应该在任何收费级别的任何服务中都内置隐私，但是人们需要付费购买更多的隐私层。 Galpert谈到GoDaddy，它提供了一项高级服务，使人们可以在WHOIS搜索中掩盖其信息。
What sorts of things can you offer your users to turn them into paying customers and reap the benefits of free?
您可以为用户提供什么样的服务，使其转变为付费客户并获得免费的好处？
翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/the-downside-of-free/
activex 缺点
