Apr
17
“Content Wants To Be Free” and other nonsense
Posted by Tim Bourquin
“Content wants to be free” and other scary phrases seem to rear their ugly head every so often. This week, the discussion focused around whether content is becoming so easy to get and make that it is becoming worthless.
The bottled water analogy fits perfect here. Tap or drinking fountain water is free and available everywhere. Yet bottled water sales continue to soar because of:
a) Convenience - bringing a bottle of water with me means I don’t have to search around or stop to find tap water
b) Higher Quality - ok this is probably more perception than reality, but people pay for bottled water because it tastes better and is perceived to be more pure because it is from a “trusted” source. (For me, I buy it because I wonder what’s been rinsed out or cleaned out at the drinking fountain that I’m about to put my face in.)
Both of these apply directly to content. If someone has created content that saves me time because I don’t have to research and aggregate the information myself, that’s convenience and I’ll definitely buy it. If someone has created a high-quality piece of content that took a great deal of work to put together, it’s going to be higher in quality than something someone put together for free - and I’m likely to buy it.
Yes, more and more content will be available for free, but it means a lot of garbage will be available as well. The more researched and more work put into a piece of content, the more value it has to the customer and the more likely they are to open their wallets for it - that will never change.
All this is to say, don’t shy away from creating content you can charge for just because you hear “digital content has no value.” Anyone who says so likely wouldn’t pay for anything anyway. Concentrate on the audience that wants convenience or wants higher quality and you can always make money with content.
Videos of kids breaking their arms on skateboards on YouTube = free
Video series on step-by-step methods to raise capital for a business from a 25-year VC exec: $
April 17th, 2008 at 10:56 am
we agree! :)
April 17th, 2008 at 11:25 am
c) millions and millions and millions of dollars in marketing/advertising.
If you want people to actually pay for your content, you’re going to have to market it heavily. Create brands like the sugar-water and fancy-water people have. If you are relying on your content to attract people virally - well most of those people expect content for free, in general.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
That’s the reason I started the premium content report for my PRoActive blog. It’s a guide to online PR and social media that helps PR practitioners stay current with the rapidly changing social media landscape.
Sal
April 17th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
But FREE is the future of business!
http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
April 17th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
@Another Steve - I saw that article on Wired, and quite frankly I think they’re completely wrong. As I remember correctly I paid $7.99 for that issue at the airport.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
New Media is still an emerging medium. There will always be the tug of war between the “free” and the “paid”, but it all comes down to a taste and a meal. “Tastes” of valuable content should be free, but “Meals” of complete content should be offered for a fee. If it works in food establishments, it’ll work with New Media.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
In part because I create podcasts for a nonprofit (a university), I have no desire or intent to charge for content. Nonetheless, I recognize that there remain costs to my audience associated with listening to my (or any) podcasts: listeners’ time. Thus, my goal of producing high quality podcasts stems not from a desire for profit but, instead, from an attempt to achieve maximum audience size at minimal “cost” to listeners—because ideally they’ll deem it time well spent.
On a related topic pertaining to podcast quality, audio editing can be a crucial factor in podcast quality. While too much editing might harm a podcast’s conversational tone (if such informality is the aim—as discussed on an episode of Podcast Brothers), too little editing—indeed, none for some podcasts—is, in my opinion, lazy on the part of some podcast producers and inconsiderate of listeners’ precious time. Should an audience be subjected to all our stumbles and bumbles, faux pas and f—-ups?
Granted, audio editing can be time intensive, and I recognize that not everyone has my enviable position of being paid to podcast as part of my regular job. But a show can be both edited and conversational (David Letterman does one every night). And your listeners just might appreciate it—showing their gratitude, perhaps, by paying.
As Tim Bourquin states above, “The . . . more work put into a piece of content, the more value it has to the customer.”
For more on the value of editing and on the question of episode length—both of which affect podcast quality—read more in my blog: http://www.thetigerbeat.com/blog/?p=360
April 18th, 2008 at 7:24 am
I agree with Greg in that marketing is everything. I have seen outstanding movies, oscar winners even, that were box office flops. No one had heard of the movie.
If a podcaster makes a great show and no one knows about it, they won’t pay for it. Throwing yourself into the iTunes directory and such doesn’t equate to magically gaining viewers who will tune in, much less pay for it!
Would you pay money on something like iTunes to try out a new TV show to see if you would like it? Most would not. This is the argument cable TV companies make against a pay per channel or view method. I love the tv show Scrubs, but I would probably have never tried it if it wasn’t on TV free every evening on Comedy Central.
Since 2005, I produce, what I think is, a fairly decent 1/2 hour technology show similar to Tekzilla and DL.TV. But I have very few subscribers compared to these behemoths that have a huge advantage by being paired with something already big like PC Magazine or Revision3 or have hosts that were once on a cable tv network (techTV).
To get marketing on this scale can cost more than most of us can pay out (and business loans aren’t given to pay for marketing schemes).
Podcasters are still facing big business competition that can distract from paying for our content. Tekzilla and DL.TV are free and successful by using advertisements. Charging for a web browser application did not work when so many were already out there for free.