David Carr at NY Times writes about plentiful content and content factories such as Demand Media.
It’s just the latest in a never-ending stream of articles about how content is being devalued and soon it’ll be free.
Don’t know about whether content is losing value – However, articles that claim content is losing value are definitely losing value.
Jokes aside the notion that content is losing value because there’s a lot of it is rather ludicrous – Content varies wildly in quality and in other ways.
People are not going to stop buying books by Stephen King and James Patterson because someone working at Demand Media is churning out 40 articles a week for $15 an article.
This post will simply explain why the only things being devalued are low quality content and content that is being positioned as low quality content.
Let’s address the current situation with regards to content in a series of steps -
- Show what content is losing value and what isn’t.
- Understand why it benefits some people to devalue content.
- Figure out the best way to preserve the value of content that’s worth people’s time.
Underlying all of this is a core reality – Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.
Even though lots of readers (due to ethics, the goodness of their hearts, or other reasons) are ready to pay for quality content it’s worth keeping this in mind.
People are paying for Quality Content (that isn’t being handed out for free)
There are many examples of people paying well for content -
- Avatar just became the highest grossing movie ever. It’s in the age of YouTube so Avatar’s success should have been impossible (if you believe content is losing its value).
- We are still selling a lot of books.
- TV is still going strong.
- The good blogs are still getting a lot more traffic than the bad ones.
- The War for eBook Prices shows that content must have some value. Why else would Amazon agree to $14.99 prices?
These are just some examples of the reality about content -
- Quality Content is still earning money.
- Very high quality content is earning a lot of money.
- Quality content is doing much, much better than low quality content.
The only cases in which quality content is not making money is when it’s being given away for free.
People are not paying for quality content when its Free or Priced unrealistically
This might come as a surprise to some people – When quality content is available for free people are NOT paying for it. Neither are people paying for quality content when it is priced too high.
Here are some examples of how not to sell quality content -
- Making your product free hoping to make money in other ways – This is suicide if your primary product is content.
- eBooks that cost more than physical books.
- Newspaper subscriptions that cost more than physical newspaper subscriptions.
- Setting up checks and procedures that make it difficult to part with money i.e. complicated sign-up processes and not providing easy payment options.
- Making it free in one channel and paid in another.
It’s not easy to strike a balance between giving away content for free (hoping to charm users into parting with their money in other ways) and charging too much (because you don’t factor in that users should not be subsidizing bad business models and other channels).
That’s why content creators have been struggling so badly with new channels in general and the Internet in particular.
Why is the ‘Content is losing its Value’ view so prevalent?
Notice that it is always people who either make money off of content or consume content who argue this point the most vehemently.
This comes back to the reality of the situation -
Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.
Look at every single element of any content eco-system -
- Readers would gladly read books and content for free if they were made to feel comfortable about it.
- Search companies and aggregators would gladly accept free content – They can manufacture a product using free raw material.
- Infrastructure companies love free content since they can sell $40 a month data plans without worrying about what users will consume on it.
- People who don’t understand content and play no part in creating it like to imagine it grows on a tree.
The only elements that are somewhat sympathetic to content creators are Content Publishers and Content Platform companies – They get a cut of content sales so it benefits them to not devalue content. That’s why Publishers and Apple and Amazon are the ONLY refuge for content creators.
Content is not free to make and it’s not free to consume
The ‘Content is losing its value’ argument is pretty illogical on both ends -
- Content creators have to put in time, effort and money to create content.
- The higher the quality the more effort and time and money needed.
- Content consumers use their time to consume content.
Think about that last item again because ‘content should be free’ arguments miss entirely the fact that people want to consume great content and get good value for their time.
Let’s consider an example -
- Two of the best books of the last year for me were The Road and The Monstrumologist.
- There were a few articles and blog posts that were as good. However, it took reading over 1,000 articles to get to them.
- High quality content from a known great source is infinitely more valuable than trolling through free content piles.
- People will pay for high quality content - Unless, the high quality content creator is giving away his work (out of stupidity, desperation or generosity).
A known, trusted source of very high quality content is immensely valuable to customers.
Users cannot spend hours trolling through the Internet every day just to find 2-3 good articles to read for 15 minutes. At least the ones whose time is worth money can’t and those are the only ones who can actually be customers if you sell content.
Our summary of reality now expands a bit -
Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.
A known, trusted source of very high quality content is immensely valuable to customers.
How do content creators preserve the value of content?
It’s quite simple for content creators to ensure their content doesn’t lose value -
- Embrace channels that value their content fairly.
- Stay away from any channel that sucks out the branding or the value of their content. No aggregators and no ‘content is worthless’ companies.
- Not give away their content for free – under any circumstances.
- Not share their content with any content creator that gives away content for free.
- Stay away from models that use content as free marketing.
In terms of being able to sell content for a fair price other factors come into play.
It’s basically a three-pronged strategy -
- Address and target only customers of good intent. Additionally, do not let customers of bad intent access your content.
- Make your content the highest quality possible. That’s instant differentiation and adds to the value customers get.
- Make it comfortable for customers to pay you for it. That includes explaining the cost of producing content, making it impossible for people to get it free anywhere, and not leaving any rationalizations for people to justify stealing it.
The first point stresses that your only customers are the ones that are paying you – If you leave a loophole that lets people access your content without paying they’ll rationalize that you never wanted to get paid.
The second point is crucial – People who give away content for free and content factories like Demand Media can never compete with high quality content. It’s simply impossible. Their only hope is convincing you that the book you spent 2 years of your life on is worth as much as a random article they wrote in 15 minutes.
The third is important – It’s not just enough for people to want your content and see its value. They need to be able to see that it cost money and effort to make, they can’t get it for free anywhere, and that you’re pro-customer. Create a long list of possible reasons people would choose not to pay you and eliminate them one by one.
It brings us to another bit of reality – If people can get your content for free or convince themselves that it’s OK to get it for free they will not pay you for it.
Conclusion - 4 Realities regarding Content
We’re left with three truths about content -
Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.
A known, trusted source of very high quality content is immensely valuable to customers.
If people can get your content for free or convince themselves that it’s OK to get it for free they will not pay you for it.
The Internet is the best invention ever for fooling people. It wasn’t built that way – However its academic and puristic beginnings resulted in a system that never had safeguards against a lot of evils.
If you have a great idea – then on the Internet you can fool people into working for you for free or into giving their content away for promises.
Content creators need to keep that in mind. It brings us to our last bit of reality regarding content -
Channels of Good Intent are crucial for Content Creators and the Internet is not one of them.
Filed under: content, Reality Tagged: | paid content, truth about content
