“It is a universal memory drawer,” says Mr. The Evernote application on three cellphones in the company's offices in Mountain View, Calif. But that rarely covered expenses even before a glut of advertising space and a severe recession cut the revenue stream. And Sampa, a personal Web site creation service started by former Microsoft executives, folded.Īdvertising was always the easy answer for making free pay. Indeed, in just the last few weeks, eBay has been looking to shed Skype, the free Internet phone call service.

(Analysts say Flickr and YouTube are not.) While free is an enticing proposition, it is very hard to make it work. Although thousands of businesses offer free services online two of the biggest are the Flickr photo service from Yahoo and YouTube from Google few can claim to be profitable. Sure, it attracts customers, but the challenge is to find someone to pay for it. Free has also become a mantra for business gurus who advocate giving Web start-ups a shot at fast growth by bringing the price of most of their wares to zero.īut as a revenue generator, free can come up short. Even an unsavvy consumer can see a benefit in snatching free products. GIVING away a product has always been a great marketing concept.

Is evernote free yahoo answers