Open Source Marketing, The Basics

It's interesting to talk about the marketing of a thing which covers a free, and freely variable product. But, in any case, we are talking about a viable method, because many advertisers from the old line find it a real threat.

So let's see, what are the main differences:

- Marketing channels: we can forget the traditional channels. There are so few paid advertisements in newspapers, which are promoting free or open source software. They're expensive and don't provide enough interactivity.
- Incomes come from different sources. At traditional products, the main source of income is the price of the product itself, and the complementary products are usually free, or make a smaller part of the company incomes (e.g. "Would You like an A/C into your car?"). In the Open Source Marketing model (OSM) the product itself is for free, and the sources of the main incomes are the complementary products/services (You get the manual how to build your car, but if you want somebody to make it instead of You, you'll probably have to pay for it). (Note: nowadays many old-line products have their main incomes from complementary products, e.g. blades are more expensive than complete razors)

- Because of these things above, an open source product needs much bigger spread to be profitable than a traditional one (popularity is needed for selling accesories, and for advertisers also). That's the answer why Canonical isn't yet profitable despite the fact that their open source operating system (Ubuntu) is running on millions of PC's.

- The role of Word-of-Mouth (WoM) is increased. The engine of OSM is the community, who are often keen on the product, that's why they recommend it to their friends with enthusiasm. And their friends are willing to try it, because it's totally free, they won't feel that somebody wants their money in the background, like in many MLM systems.

- Moreover, the traditional provider-client relationship is often irrelevant in the OSM, because each user can easily become part of the development team (well, this is usually not true for the complementary services...)

I could write pages about this topic (and I will, but not now, and not in one post :)), that's one of the main topics of this blog. Recommended article: http://www.collaboratemarketing.com/open_source_marketing/