This post isn’t in support of making content free. It’s just an answer to a post by Dan Rayburn titled Bandwidth Isn’t Free, Distribution Isn’t Free, So Why Should Content Be Free?
Why Should Content Be Free?
The post makes some very good points -
- Video content costs money to produce, to distribute, and to consume.
- Ad based free video consumption is very unlikely to work. He mentions that even YouTube and Hulu can’t get ads to work and are trying to move to subscription models - that’s a very compelling argument.
- Cost of distributing video over the web might get cheap but it’ll never be free.
- Internet being an open platform does not mean all content on it should be free.
- Successful content models (like MLB.tv) often come from companies that never gave away their work for free.
The two really good points the post makes is that there is such a thing as a distinction between quality content and non-quality content and that content creators need to stop giving away content.
The central question that the post asks i.e. Why Should Content Be Free? is never really addressed. So we’re going to take a look at a lot of reasons that content is free.
Reasons it’s easy for Content to be Free
While content shouldn’t be free there are some very good reasons it’s so often free on the Internet.
It’s in the best interests of users (in the short term) for content to be free
The absolute biggest reason it’s easy for content to be free is that it really benefits users.
Users are in a million different ways preferring free content and encouraging content creators to make their content free -
- Free content is watched more, downloaded more, and so forth.
- Users lavish love and praise and thanks on people giving away their content training them to do it more and more.
- Some users actually buy the content after they get it for free which is additional incentive.
- Take any user feedback survey – There’s always a pressure to lower prices and to choose advertising based models.
Content creators need to understand that users will always choose free if presented with the option and if not presented with the option will try to push content creators in that direction.
In users’ minds content should be free because it’s better than content being paid.
It is easy for users to rationalize what’s in their best interest
It’s really easy for users to choose a free, non-sustainable model and start believing that it is sustainable and actually better for content creators than a paid model because they can rationalize it.
That’s why some readers aren’t happy with $10 ebooks, why some users feel advertising (which they don’t click on) should subsidize everything, and why a lot of users feel very comfortable using free offerings and turning a blind eye to the consequences for content creators.
It’s very easy to train people to believe something that benefits them. A lot of the time people do this themselves.
It’s in the best interests of Internet Companies (short term and long term) for content to be free
If users are consuming content and not really clicking on ads it doesn’t really hurt the advertising company if it earns money based on number of times the ad is shown.
For them content is their raw material. The packaged product with content and advertising is their product sold to users and they get paid by advertisers based on the number of people who view their product. It’s in their best interest to have content be free so they get their raw material for free and have more and more of it to package and give to users.
Except for Google and the search engines every advertising company (to be precise 90% of them) are either preying on naive users or preying on naive advertisers.
Most of the Internet benefits from free content.
The House always wins
The Internet is very similar to a casino where you are under the illusion that you can come in, give away free content, sell ads against it, and make more than you could have otherwise.
Regardless of what content creators pretend – the truth is that they only chose to give away content and depend on advertising because they were greedy and thought they could make more money this way than they would by selling content.
However, just as in a casino, the House always wins. The Internet won, its users won, and its companies won – content creators got rewarded for their greed.
Internet companies are a lot smarter than content creators
Individual content creators and content companies just aren’t as smart as Internet companies.
If you consider the evidence -
- Using a platform that other companies can make money off of.
- Making content creators work for free for the promise of big rewards.
- Making people work for free for the reward of virtual rewards and things like karma.
- Making people pay for virtual gifts.
- Convincing content creators that advertising would support them.
- Taking up all the branding.
- Taking up all the goodwill so users are thankful to Internet companies instead of content creators.
The Internet companies thoroughly beat content creators and played them for fools. Content creators have no room to complain because they weren’t motivated by anything other than greed and fear.
We have platforms that gather and rank low quality content
A great example of how Internet companies are smarter than most content creators is the creation of platforms like YouTube and Flickr.
Let’s walk through the logic – creators and users come up and upload content, the platform offers you the invaluable service of sharing that content, users consume the content and rank it. At that point you have a huge amount of content – the best of which is easily accessible and can compete against paid content.
Then the platforms sell for tens of millions of dollars (Flickr) or billions of dollars (YouTube) and the new owners try to monetize off of advertising or use the goodwill generated to make money in other ways.
What do content creators get? A share of advertising, recognition, happiness. That recognition and small share of advertising is enough for most content creators.
Why?
There is desperation and some content creators are already earning nothing
If you’re a hungry upcoming content creator or just hungry for people to appreciate you then getting a platform to reach other people is enough.
Most people uploading content on the Internet are earning nothing from it – It doesn’t matter to them that they will continue to earn nothing. For them it’s all upside because they might get recognition and they might become very popular and they might get a contract down the line and a TV show.
That hope is enough. Without the platform they didn’t have any hope – Now they do.
There is infinite competition and free sets you apart
A big reason content creators are desperate is that there is a sea of competition and it’s almost impossible to stand apart.
If you’re free in a world of $1 content you win – you’re noticed, you’re easier to try out, and you get more exposure. Of course, soon everyone is at $0 and then the advantage is gone – However, no one is going to go back to $1 now.
It’s only the big, successful content creators that are able to move to alternate channels – TV, movies, published books, and so forth.
Everyone else continues in the sea of $0 infinite content.
Free is the path of least resistance
Content creators are lazy – they’ve spent all their effort and psychic energy and time on creating the best content they could.
Which would you choose -
- Work really hard on marketing and positioning and reaching customers and follow-up and sell content for $5 each.
- Put your content at $0 and let it do the marketing and hope somewhere down the line you figure out how to make money.
For nearly all content creators Free is the path of least resistance.
It’s like all the books that claim you can become a millionaire by working 10 hours a week. They are so lovable and cuddly because it’s what we secretly hope for. That’s exactly what Free and Advertising supported Free are – they are incredibly alluring because they promise you’ll never have to sell anything and you’ll not have to work hard.
Free means you don’t face rejection
A related big benefit of free is that you don’t face rejection. If your content is free and 1 million people consume it for free you can lie to yourself you’re a success.
If you placed it at $10 you might have had to face the truth that only 27 people bought it.
The Advertising supported model myth is alive and well
This comes back to the fact that it benefits advertising companies, the Internet and users that content creators believe they’ll eventually make back their money from advertising.
It’s very, very attractive because of a few reasons -
- The Path of Least Resistance concept we discussed above.
- Search Engines have shortcuts that take users where they want to already go. Those shortcuts are misinterpreted as ads by content creators who don’t realize that users want to go to their content – They are not going to leave that delicious content and go somewhere else.
- It’s a mass delusion. Everyone else believes it.
The biggest reason it’s so attractive is that content creators are often greedy and think they can get things easily or get more than they deserve.
Content Creators and Advertisers think people are still as naive as TV audiences in the 1950s were
It’s easy to believe we are still in the 1950s when running a few TV advertisements would get 30% of the population into cigarettes or make them believe Product X is better than Product Y because shiny, happy people like Product X. It created generations of consumers and a consumer culture that is still alive and well.
The Internet is very different – The stuff that actually kills users online is far more advanced and powerful than advertising. It’s things like virtual games and companies pretending to help people. On the Internet advertising is an ancient trick that no longer works – Most users have learnt to totally ignore advertising.
It’s basically two things – A lot more people are smart and immune to being manipulated. The people who are still vulnerable have far more powerful forces pulling their strings.
Content creators just aren’t in a position to trick people with advertising.
It’s really hard to get people to pay for content on the Internet
It’s important to understand that content creators are trying to beat the house by asking people to pay for content. The whole system is set-up to get content creators to give away their content - the only way out might be to get off the Internet.
The Internet’s ethos makes free seem natural
There are beliefs on the Internet like ‘Information Should Be Free’ and ‘Ecosystems should be open’ that would get laughed at in the real world. On the Internet these make perfect sense because the Internet is built on a university ethos of free sharing of information.
There are 95% content consumers and 5% content creators. If you think of the Internet as a democracy it’s easy to understand why the content consumers are able to push the notion that free content is the most natural thing in the world.
There are always people who really do want to give away their content
The problem is exacerbated because there really are people who totally believe in the free concept and give away their content for free.
Lots of people give away their code and programs for free.
It’s hard to sell content of any type when there are some people who are giving away the same (or similar) content for free.
There is a huge amount of low quality free content
It’s also tough to sell content because there is so much free content.
Let’s say a movie studio is trying to sell a movie online. Its competition includes -
- YouTube.
- Free music videos.
- Indie movie makers who share their movies for free.
- Pirates.
- People who get into theaters with handy cams and then upload low quality movies.
Out of dozens of options the official movie download is just one and it’s the only one that’s paid.
There’s less demarcation between quality and non-quality content
Lots of reasons why the gap is lesser now -
- By giving away content, content creators have devalued their content.
- The huge number of options make it difficult to distinguish quality.
- The platforms, and even the whole Internet, handicaps quality content on purpose.
- Users handicap quality content on purpose – they want it free so they pretend they don’t value it.
- Content creators have been shifting resources from creating quality content to things like trying to fool people.
In a sense content creators have been doing everything possible to prove their content isn’t worth much including giving it away free and lowering its quality.
Lots of people give away content to sell other things
Lots of companies have begun to use content as a happy hour free drink that gets people in the door and gets them to buy other stuff.
Doctor’s websites have free health guides. Travel sites have free travel magazines. Authors have free short stories to sell their novels. It just goes on and on and on.
If you’re selling content and everyone else is giving away content to sell other things you’re in trouble.
Some companies use free to gather customer goodwill and customer information
Equally as problematic are companies that give away free content to create goodwill.
All the major email providers are free – Why are they doing it?
Because they want to sell their other products, they want to create loyal customers, they want to safeguard their other products, they want customer information, and lots of other reasons.
Facebook is in the same bucket – It’s using free to get customers into the system and get their information and sell them to advertisers.
Some Internet Users have a lot more time than money
For better or worse, there are a lot of people online who have 5 hours to kill and $1 or less to spend. They are ALWAYS going to choose free and cheap content.
If you have an absolutely great book that costs $10 and takes 3 hours to read you’re never going to make a sale to these people. Ever. It gets even worse when you think of countries where people have even less to spend.
One reason a lot of Internet users have very little money to spend is that they paid so much for their Internet device and their Internet connection. They expect content to be free and so do the ISPs and Computer manufacturers - Luckily for them content creators are happy to be stupid and play along.
Some Internet Users don’t care about quality of content
Perhaps the biggest reason it’s difficult to sell content is that there’s always the 80% of users who don’t care about quality.
Take books – 20% or so of the population actually pay for books and make up 80% of the book purchases. The other 80% is happy to read TMZ and Perez Hilton and pretend they read books.
There’s little hope for Paid Content
Content creators took a system that was built to exploit them and fed themselves to it.
You have 10 years of training, companies that want to exploit you, users that want content for free, and a set of rules and beliefs that are against you.
Why would you still try to sell content online? Why would you be super stupid and give away content for free?
The big threat is that if you don’t have free content users will go away somewhere else.
Is it really a bad thing to lose ‘users’ that don’t pay you anything, don’t even click on ads (which would generate a semblance of income), and after all of that curse and deride you for trying to get money for content that ought to be free?
Filed under: content | Tagged: lack thereof, paid content, truth about content
