I had to laugh when I read Peter's post Free is the New Black because I had just decided to cancel my online subscription to The Wall Street Journal (for which I was paying $155 dollars a year - up from $99 in the past two years alone).  It seems that everything I wanted to read in the WSJ was already available to me for free on the site.  Sure, WSJ probably won't let me search its archives once I'm not a member, but there are other ways to find that information if I really need it.  The point is, WSJ, I love your paper but I don't need all the other extraneous stuff you're charging me for.  Which brings me to the point of this post:  how many business owners revisit their business model on a regular basis to make sure it still makes sense to customers?   I suspect not many.

Your business model is a reflection of how effectively you've created value for your customer, in other words, how happy the customer is with the solution you've provided to their problem.  If you've provided a cure for the problem, you're in luck because customers will pay anything within reason to get that cure.  If all you've offered is a nice-to-have-but-I-don't-really-NEED-it value, you're not so lucky because customers won't have a compelling reason to buy.  When lots of companies offer solutions like yours  to a problem, you're also out of luck because now your customers have a bunch of choices, and the only real criterion they'll use to make their choice is price.  Not a great business model on which to compete. 

Peter is right.  We're all looking for free.  However, if you convince us that what you're offering can't be found anywhere else, or that it solves a specific problem we're having, we will certainly pay you to get that solution.  And that is a very nice place to be if you're an entrepreneur.