tofuwatch.com

Get your free, here! Information is so free that it’s thinking about charging money

I stumbled upon this interview of Chris Anderson of Wired talking about the economics of Free – which is the title of his book – and I thought: I think I’ll pay attention.

We’re all actors in one way or another in the free market. Mainstream journalists, in recent years, have been grappling with the idea of free in the context of money in a full-on way - since, well, economists talk about covering costs and earning profits for business survival.

As we know, low advertising dollars have created a churn in which thousands of people have left the industry. Mind you, this is in the context of people growing more and more used to – and in some way, expecting – free online content.

So, how do you pull in enough money to avoid a free market failure in the context of an increasingly online world when people know they have an option to not hand over greenbacks?

Well, the legendary Anderson offers up some ideas in this interview from Geek Entertainment TV (which has a video about the Pez Museum). By the way, since I posted the interview and, um, didn’t pay anything for it, I’d like to say thank you very much for posting this at YouTube and for letting others embed it.

Anderson, who helped propel the idea of The Long Tail into the online consciousness, talks about giving some of your product for free and asking people to pay money for other portions of what you’ve created or have.

That makes sense, though in this interview with WNYC, he discusses how some talented bloggers are not paid but have their work posted on commercial outlets. The benefit for them, he says and as I understood it, is that others will recognize their work.

The only catch that I see is that if you’re a doctor and run a great blog on a commercial site, then you have one economic sector (medicine) subsidizing another (online news, information and content).

I came across the interview you see above after I glanced at an interview with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on The Wrap and realized that its founder, Sharon Waxman, had talked with Anderson. That led to the YouTube page which had other Anderson interviews, including the one with Geek Entertainment TV.

The idea of something for free has long been fascinating, I think, for all of us.

Free ice cream cone? Free car wash? Free cup of coffee?

We’re there, we’re there, we’re there.

Free round-trip airplane ticket to Paris?

Our response: How many can we get?

I’d like to bring my brother-in-law’s parents and their brothers and sisters. 

Months ago, I talked about how the idea of free would work very well – and across the board – in an autonomous commune. In fact, one study revealed that billions of people want free online content.

But in a free market in which there are financial costs, well, that might have some obstacles.

You could keep your costs low. But that would mean trimming much, including what you own and labor and expertise that you might have as an employer.

I noted the idea of lower costs when I talked about a new “American price” – meaning anything considerably lower than what you’re used to paying.

Disruptors to traditional media have a point that prices might be too high for items in the free market. But dropping that price to zero will only work if grocery stores, gas stations, hospitals, car dealers and banks also embrace giving what they have away for free, too.

So, for traditional media, the idea of the paywall has been bouncing around for months.

The New York Observor recently quoted David Remnick of The New Yorker as backing a pay model to cover the journalism and writing that the magazine publishes in print and online.

Here are two quotes from the Observor article.

First:

I was going to be damned if I was going to train 18-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 25-year-olds, that this is like water that comes out of the sink.

Second:

Remember the days of information wants to be free? …So therefore the only thing that anyone with any brains could do with a magazine like The New Yorker is to put the whole thing online and give it away. Give it away! And if you were against that in some way or you said, ‘Wait a minute,’ you were–wait for it–clueless….I opted for clueless.

The other issue is that the model of free online content might actually drive more people to search out words, music, audio interviews and videos that have no cost.

That was one premise put forward by author Bill Wasik in an interview with comedian Mo Rocca on CBS News.

Yes, as you’ve seen, I’ve run this blog at no financial cost to visitors since last year.

So, how can I talk about the importance of covering costs while I’m giving information and analysis away for free?

Well, I also pursue freelance writing. This is one way that I’m letting people know of that service.

It is similar to Anderson’s strategy of giving some of your product or services away at no cost and charging for a more specialized, custom-oriented project.

This blog enables me to stay connected with current events, interesting topics, history and the beauty of experimentation.

I mean, you have seen my stop-motion clips, haven’t you?

And staying connected with the world also lets me post a video clip about an author and editor talk about this whole idea of a free ride.