Windows Live Writer quickly ascended to a mainstream tool for managing blogs. The price of free got the company there, but here are 3 reasons Microsoft should start to charge.

1. Charging for Writer will reduce Microsoft’s need to bundle it with bloatware. This trend is already apparent during installation.

The Writer team made a good decision to position the other software options as opt-in, at least for now.

2. Writer’s customer base is large and moving to another application would be inconvenient for them. That’s especially relevant for bloggers who use Writer’s image management feature to accommodate multiple authors.

This strategy fits well with Microsoft’s history because the company is good at innovating in a market until they have it cornered, with competitors on the run.

3. Charging for Writer would establish a clear differentiation point between Microsoft and Google. It would minimize the need for Microsoft to include advertising and track individual usage patterns to make money.

Clearly that would take a commitment on Microsoft’s part to keep their interface uncluttered and production-focused.

Associating a fixed profit per product may also encourage Microsoft to shorten the development lifecycle and incorporate killer new features that boost productivity. The key would be for Microsoft to follow through on these commitments while maintaining a fair price point.

In the meantime, Microsoft is doing a fair job at permeating the free-for-publicity market and keeping their users happy with new updates. Yesterday, the Writer team released a patch that corrected problems connecting to Blogger.

According to Microsoft, “previously, when you used Windows Live Writer to publish to a Blogger weblog, the option to publish a draft of the post to the server was not supported. This update enables the option to publish a draft of the post to the server.”

Related:

Entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 7:10 pm under Blogosphere, Microsoft.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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