The “FREE” Model – Cheap but Intelligent
“FREE”, from the author of “The Long Tail”, Chris Anderson. The word FREE, sounds cheap, sheepish and stingy. However, I found it to be intelligent, brilliant and fascinating in the sense of business and marketing strategy. Long before this book was published, the word “FREE” has come to me while i am doing research for a business proposal. It is everywhere whether you realized it or not.
For products that I am interested with, “Cheap people” like me are always never hesitate to take “FREE” and discounted products. And people with high egoistic and self-esteem person will never understand. However, these people did not realised that the Radios they are listening and the TV they are watching comes “FREE” as well. and with today’s informative world of internet, most content and services are provided “FREE” such as, email, news, blogs, dictionary, music, video, software whether is it from google, yahoo, youtube or etc.
FREE is never meant by entirely “FREE”. Is just that money is being subsidized and transferred from one product to another or from one person to another. For example, our local media broadcasters such as “TheSun” newspapers, RTM 1, 2 and TV3, NTV 7 and etc, are provided free to the public to read, watch and listen. So where does the revenues comes from? It is obvious that these broadcasters charges the advertisers at a very costly price. So in this sense, audiences are being subsidized by advertisers to watch free content. Same goes to Google search engine, YouTube and etc. Hence, whether is it a “buy one FREE one product”, or a “FREE trail” saloon, the intention is to gets consumers interested in the paid product. for example, Skype provide free phone calls to users, and you need to pay to call to cell phones.
Ideas can be generated within the “FREE” Model and it will be the future trend of businesses employs. For start-ups to employ such strategy will be a brilliant one. However, the tough part to employ such strategy is how you will be able to sustain the losing part to gain the interest of consumers with your paid products. Huge capital is needed.
Recommending HowStuffWorks.com (Must Read: for grant applicants)
Tech geek like me have not when for business schools, marketing nor finance classes. However, such information could be found over the Internet. There is this site called "HowStuffWorks" has started to become my favourite, introduced by my colleague, KC (it was his all time favourite), and I am now eagerly to introduced to all of you who are reading my blog. "HowStuffWorks" has almost everything on how something works, although it is not written in very detail, but it does benefits me in certain ways. for example, when someone proposed me an online Business, I will definitely look into this site for information, such as "How Creating an Online Business Works", crack into the online business giant such as ebay on "How eBay Works", learning the ebay way. Or, being the CEO of the company, I shall learnt the responsibility of CEO, then I read "How CEO Works". Hence, for business starters like you and me, we should read "Starting Business" in HowStuffWorks. The following list of links is essential for start ups and grant applicants to read:
- How Business Ideas Work – Grant applicant must read.
- How Business Plan Work – Grant applicant must read.
- How Start Up Capital Work
- How Does Venture Capital Work
- 10 Ways to Finance A New Business
- 10 Common Problems for New Businesses
- How Business Legal Structure Work
- How Marketing Plans Work
For those who are reading the my blog post on "Basic Tips and Guidelines for applying ICT Funding in Malaysia", the links above is a must read, specially the How Business Plan and Business Ideas Work.
Video Sharing: The Secret of a Serial Entrepreneur
I found out this inspiring videos on Entrepreneurship. It really blown me up. The public speaking is so amazing and the topic extremely interesting. hope you enjoy….
Summarise of the video:
- In a Public Speaking session, 30% audience will follow the talk, 20% will be day dreaming, and the 50% will be engaging in sex fantasy.
- 6 phases of entrepreneur: Start -> Innovate -> Sell -> Hire -> Partner -> Finance
- Common mistake of entrepreneurship, they don’t see "Marketing", "Building Brand".
- Start Part
- Am I passionate enough, do I think I could make a difference.
- What you are trying to do is UNKNOWABLE by its nature.
- There is NO EXIT STRATEGY for entrepreneurs, the end game is to earn lots of money, and you won’t know how much…
- Entrepreneurship is about the Start, is not about finishing. you start you learn, is a marathon.
- The will, passion and determination that the only thing entrepreneur has.
- Innovate Stage
- What is the key insights, unique, and sustainable advantages in the model?
- Rapid development and iteration.
- Galvanizing events.
- Sell ( this is the part I don’t really understand)
- Marquee Account, Referenceable User….
- New pain point – Finding out your real business.
- Cost of customer acquisition and LTV
- Does it scale?
- Hire
- Big companies, hires extraordinary people and force them to do ordinary work. Startup hires ordinary people and inspired them to do extraordinary work.
- Established company, will hire 3 people to do the job of 1. Startups will hire 1 person to do the job of 3. (the 1:3 rule.)
- Fire yourself and contract everyone. Hiring long term employees are more costly for startups….
- Work is more important than advice.
- leveraging on "Client Development Programs".
- To keep your contractors fire up with work, advertise every position in the company every 6 months.
- Partner
- Finance
I am lazy to write… the rest is up to u to explore. 
cheehOOng.com vs cheehong.com
To readers of this blog, my name is Chee Hoong, Hoong with a double “O“. It’s pronounce a bit like William Hung’s “Hung”. 
I m frustrated with people that get my name wrongly spelled, specially when they misspelled chee Hoong as chee Hong. Imagine a name with a difference of a single alphabet “O“, your property, your insurance, your bank account, your money is all NOT belongs to you, and how pissed off will that be when it comes to money.
if gOOgle, is mis-spelled as Gogle, it’s no longer gOOgle anymore. However, google is smart in buying gogle.com, it both redirects to the google site of your country region. Unfortunately, I am not as lucky as that, cheehong.com was acquired by a china manufacturer in Hui Zhou, China. My friend accidentally fall on to the misspelled site, and that is the reason to inspire my to write this entry. “Hey dude, Do you know how to spell my name !!???”
Yahoo has published a list of most misspelled names in their search engine, and the top goes to “Wallmart” instead of “Wal-Mart”. With reference to www.jenniferslegg.com, a Search Engine Marketing consultant, that some web masters utilized the misspelled trick, to get their sites rank to be push up. Imagine with the correct spell for Britney Spears already has a 488,941 searches from a list that google published, the one with the misspelled has a 40,000+ searches, it’s definitely a brilliant and a lousy trick to implement in SEO. and if you do realized, some number 1 ranking sites in search engine, is definitely not an official site, specially for those gaming sites.
Some product manufacturers even uses the existing famous brands, misspelled it and endorse as a new brand to their own products, for examples, i have seen “Adidas” is spell as “Abibas“, “Panasonic” as “Pansonic“. It’s so brilliant for these manufacturers to invest on a misspelled word to gain its product popularity, save a lot on marketing their brand names, and capture the market locally and internationally. Hence, to some people which can’t afford a branded item, eventually they go for a cheaper one, and a similar name of the product. and surprisingly, with a misspelled name, how many sales and traffics has been loosing to competitors. Eventually, Pansonic in Malaysia is quite well known in electrical goods by the Malaysians.
So, do you see the impact of a misspelled name? Just to remind you, my name is Chee Hoong, “HOOng”, with a double “O“.
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Life is interesting, its all about experimenting, trial and errors and self improvments. This blog is all about my personal experience. I am full with ideas, and i will achieve every one of them step by step.
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