Storynory: A lekker example of how giving stuff away can be good for business

Now that I’m looking for them, I can’t take a step without falling over interesting examples of social media marketing at work. Right now, for example, my five-year-old is taking some rest time listening to a podcast of The Happy Prince, beautifully read and downloaded gratis from StoryNory.com. The site is a project of a London PR firm called Blog Relations, and their media relations pack says this, in answer to the first question that popped into my mind:

What is your business model?
We want to keep the stories free forever. We are looking for a sponsor who would love to be closely associated with a voice that reaches into the hearts of kids and families. One day it would be great to have spin-offs into books and other media. Storynory also gives us proof-of-concept that helps bring consultancy projects to the parent company, Blog Relations. For the time being, we more than cover our costs with Google AdSense and sponsorship brought to us by our agent, Wizzard Media.

I like the idea of the free site as proof of concept for larger projects. Storynory, incidentally, currently ranks #2 on a Google search for “kids audio books” and they’re serving over 200,000 downloads a month. That’s a decent market.