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The Wall Street Journal recently discussed the dilemma of making a profit in an environment of abundant free content in it’s article, “The Economics of Giving It Away.”

The “give it away so they will come” business model has worked well for many companies. Google leads the pack with it’s AdWords cash cow and enterprise products subsidizing the world-class search engine that gave it its start (and, for many of us, has become the shorthand verb used for “do a web search”). For others, the compelling business model was an adaptation to the business model of Microsoft, Google and others — if you execute a game-changing technology and establish a solid user base, a Giant will buy you out at a huge premium and hire you to run it. This could be called the “build-to-entice” model.

That worked well when enterprise money was flowing and visions were expanding. But in a contracting economy, the paradox may be that freebies without a good cash flow plan may be unsustainable.

It makes me wonder about the free tools (such as Jott and Skype) that I am becoming increasingly dependent on for my own productivity. I’m more interested than I used to be in finding out how they’re making money. If I can’t see the likelihood of a healthy cash flow, I may be more cautious about baking some of these delicious tools into my workflow.