Posts Tagged ‘freemium’

The Vindicia Holiday Twitter Program: Peanut Labs

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Last week, we announced our 2nd annual Vindicia Holiday Twitter Program with a great set of client promotions.  The Program launches today with Peanut Labs, a client which is known both for its social monetization tools as well as its now legendary Pirates of Silicon Valley Cruises.  Peanut Labs recently launched SurveyTool.com which provides a highly flexible and customizable market research service.  For today’s promotion they are giving away two codes that extend your free basic account to a PRO account for six months, a value of nearly $150.  Here are the details on how to enter.

  • Send an email to info (at) vindicia (dot) com and describe in one or two sentences how you would use SurveyTool
  • Two winners will be chosen from the list of entries
  • The promotion is valid for entries received through the end of December 2011.

Good luck!  Tomorrow’s entry takes us into the world of publishing.

What Does “Build Online Revenue” Mean Exactly?

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

For a few years, Vindicia’s tagline has been sitting a quiet sentry duty. People read it, but it seems to me to be something they absorb without thinking – like those photos with surprise objects in them that everyone looks past. I wanted to stop a moment, take a step back, and explain what Build Online Revenue really means.

First, there is a very tactical answer to that question. Vindicia, since inception and even before we launched CashBox in 2008, was about creating a platform to enable digital merchants to increase their revenues. CashBox extends customer lives while bringing tools and efficiency to our client’s marketing team tasked with expanding the paying freemium or subscriber base.  We do this with our SaaS solution in conjunction with industry best practices.

At my previous company, I personally experienced how hard it was to manage through channel conflict, as physical became digital, while simultaneously dealing with piracy. Delivering software services that delight and allowing business teams to experiment is an essential part of what Vindicia brings to life. We continue to build on the ability to leverage data, both a client’s and our entire network of 120 million accounts and 80 million unique credit cards, to help clients explore the non intuitive world that involves marketing digital services directly to end users.

But there is something larger that Build Online Revenue means. It is an attempt to capture a conviction. I cut my teeth in a world surrounded by pundits exclaiming, “everything is going to be free, man!” Even the wizened opined that the only way to build successful internet businesses were to capture as many users as fast as you possibly could, getting paid be damned.

I don’t believe that. I believe that the advertising model has its place, but it isn’t the way the great intellectual works of human history get created. The services that will be critical to us, that will move us, that will inspire us and allow us to create – they’re going to cost money because they are worth every penny – even more than their public price. Vindicia wants to be the mechanism through which the next wave of digital creation creates wealth.

Vindicia wants to help the entire world Build Online Revenue.

Diversity

Monday, September 13th, 2010
Diversity is good in all aspects of life – in the workplace environment, in the gene pool, and even in business models.  On the latter topic, we spend a lot of time both internally and with our clients discussing and implementing best practices, and it was in the course of one such discussion that the concept of diversity really hit home.  

The client in question had seen a slight drop in subscribers.  We were initially puzzled that their overall revenues were up despite this subscriber drop, when we remembered that they also generated revenue from add-on microtransactions.  Sure enough, the revenue from existing subscribers buying additional items via microtransactions exceeded the lost revenue from those who unsubscribed, proving the old axiom that your loyal customers are willing to pay even more than what you charge them.  We investigated this trend across our client base and found that hybrid business models like the one above can add between 8-10% to the average revenue per user (ARPU).

We have two upcoming conversations on business models.  On Wednesday, Jeremy Nusser discusses free and freemium to kick off our Fall 2010 Webinar series.  Next week our CEO, Gene Hoffman, talks on a panel at the NY Games Conference about payment models that work.  We encourage you to join the debate.

Customer Data Ownership

Monday, August 9th, 2010

New companies are being formed every day – here in Silicon Valley, we see a lot of activity and buzz around all of the companies that are creating the next big thing. This is always exciting to follow, but for us here at Vindicia, it is doubly interesting. We take note of the business models and the target markets for these startups as we’ve built our business on meeting the needs of companies selling digital goods online to consumers. One trend we’ve been seeing lately is a sharp growth in the number of consumer-focused startups. This is great, but as many players are new to accepting direct payments from consumers, considerable thought should be given to the business strategies and how to be successful both near- and long-term.

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