Thinking about business models

Inquisitor is a really cool program that augments the search box in Safari (which for you heathens out there is the default Mac OS X web browser.) It's kind of hard to explain just what it does - it's kind of a magical word completion thingie that guesses, based on other searches and who knows what else , what you are going to search for. But I am not writing about Inquisitor, although I recommend it highly. Here's a post by it's author, Dave, who is trying to figure out how or whether he can make some money with his creation.

"Why am I considering pay-per-download? Well, one advantage is that it's far easier to do than a full-blown registration system. While the levy is very small, if everyone gives a little then everyone benefits. It seems more equitable that way. Alas, it is true that there's no solid way to enforce the levy. The software could be traded easily between friends or posted on an unauthorized website. The former I view as a form of viral marketing and the latter is traceable and can be dealt with as a clear-cut breach of license." (from David Watanabe's blog)

The question of when and how and how much to begin charging users of BlogBridge occupies me from time to time. Our core objective right now is to get BlogBridge into everybody's hands - everybody in our target market that is - so called "Infojunkies" or "Professionals." But this won't be forever. The beauty of a project such as this is that we can be clever, innovative or at least experimental so all new and different ideas are worth thinking about. Technorati Tags: blogbridge, businessmodel