Free me up from free
Seth Godin is a guy who gets the way business is changing. He’s an author and prolific blogger. The other day, he mentioned that craigslist would be better if they charged a dollar for every listing.
If Craigslist charged a dollar for every listing, what would happen?
Well, the number of bogus listings and repetitive listings would plummet, making the site far easier to use.
The number of scam artists using the site would go down, because it’s more difficult to be anonymous when money changes hands.
He went on to discuss the positive aspect of free as well as the negative. It was really a brilliant post.
So, I’ve decided to start charging for access to this site.
Just kidding.
But, it did raise some pretty interesting questions about our expectations as consumers. We use free services all day long. I use gmail for email, facebook and twitter for social networking, a hotmail account for any form I have to fill out online that I think will result in spam, hulu to catch up on tv, google news to get my news, and so on and so forth.
I also aspire to write. I’d even like to *gasp* get paid to do it one day. So, how do I balance that with loving my free stuff? Of course, this is a similar conversation to the one we had last week about music producers and royalties. We’re no less willing to pay for things, we simply want actual value for our dollars. So, one day, I hope you’ll pay for my writing, in book form or something. But before that day comes, I hope my writing will become valuable enough to ask people to pay for it.
Are there any products you’re happy paying for even though there’s a free, legal alternative?
I pay for Usenet access. (www.newshosting.com) It’s ironic because I use it to get my tv, movies, music etc. Everyone knows there are free alternatives like torrents, hulu or what have you. Also some fairly cheap “legal” alternatives like Itunes, amazon etc. but, I Love it.
This gives me access to WAY more than what most people think is available. And it max’s my 16mbs connection. I click on a show, its done and I stream it to my ps3 in under 2 minutes, 5 mins for a movie…
Slightly controversial…sorry I’m a pirate.
Joel
7 Oct 09 at 7:42 am
Pirate Joel, hmm… usenet has managed to fly under my radar to the point that I was, until now, essentially unaware of the service. Interesting… the bottom line of it seems to be that your user experience is significantly improved enough that it’s worth paying for, right? There’s a lesson here even for the non-pirates (or the cheapies who use torrents
. Good stuff
andrew mackay
7 Oct 09 at 9:02 am
Speaking of “free”…you should read Wil Wheaton’s latest blog. It’s a letter to a guy who hosts a site which is offering one of his audio boks for free. Also the blog on CAD this wednesday had to do with people’s expectations for free content. Personally I’d be fine paying a small fee to read blogs, read the webcomics that i enjoy, etc.
Matt
7 Oct 09 at 2:52 pm
Exactly Andrew, now there is kind of a steep learning curve, and lots of different software you can use, but once you have the basics, nothing can beat it. (For me at least)
And ya it does show that if you can provide such a great product people will pay for it even if there are free alternatives.
I also pay a small donation to some Podcasts that I listen to, they do a great show, for free so I throw a few bucks in whenever I can. (KeithandtheGirl, This week in Tech, and The MorningX (Detroit Morning show)
ps. I like the new site.
Joel
7 Oct 09 at 5:37 pm