I had a long talk yesterday with a good friend at the back end of a bad business experience. Call it recession-related, banking, credit cards and a website that might be valuable someday–good information, nice interface–but was taking too long.
We had a talk about web apps, trends and the long-term problem of free. My friend is safe, thanks; he’ll be fine while what he’s been working on falls apart through no fault of his own.
But free? Are you ready for free? If you’re looking at a web business or information or expert business, you’ll probably have to deal with this. People on the web–you included–expect free.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you already know about the dustup between Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Anderson and Seth Godin . . .
Anderson’s book, FREE, came out a few weeks back, arguing in part that the distribution costs of any intellectual property that can be boiled down to digital format, be it a song, a book, a video or a game, have become so low that you should essentially round down to zero and accept that if you don’t make it available for free, someone else will.
So, rather than fight it, just suck it up and give it all away.
That’s from Jonathon Fields’ post last week: Why I Hope the Free Brigade Got It Wrong. He adds:
Because if the Free Brigade are right, if we who create information, performances, music, writings, recordings and any other electronic “commoditized” form of our work are required to give our creations away whenever they appear in digital form, that effectively shuts down one of the most powerful and lucrative ways to scale a small business built around creative or strategic output.
Which brings me back to my conversation with my friend from the besieged website. Somebody has to make payroll.
Subscribe via RSS
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
If this quote of a quote of a summary of Anderson’s book, FREE, correctly presents Anderson’s premise, why, then, is he trying to SELL this book for $26.99 (on Amazon.com and elsewhere). Shouldn’t he be footing the bill to host this book content for free read and download on his own website?
Hasn’t Anderson heard of TANSTAAFL ? Just to translate: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch…nothing is for free…there’s always a price to be paid,even the air in this world!
Free is fine however, it does not really produce buyers. A buyer who has spend even $1 with you is more valuable than 10,000 freebie seekers.
Dr. Letitia Wright
The Wright Place TV Show
http://wrightplacetv.com
http://www.twitter.com/drwright1
Some people think they are entitled to everything for free. It’s the reason I am quitting graphic design. I would rather find a profession where someone isn’t willing to do it for free.
As far as music and the like, I think others will make it available for free, even if you don’t. Just an example, I read about a company that makes videos of action sports. One person at the company said it’s almost not worth producing the videos, because all it takes is one person to put the video on YouTube…then everyone else just watches for free.
A lot of people think art is worthless. It’s sad that people think some things should be free, but that seems to be how society is today.
I’ll stop here before this starts sounding like a John Stossel 20/20 special.
{ 1 trackback }