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Why Are You Giving Away Content for Free?

Posted by: on: April 2, 2008

If you’re blogging, you’re most likely publishing content and making it freely available for public consumption. Everyone is able to access and read your articles as long as they have an internet connection.

Time to stop and think a little about this. Why are you giving away content for free? What are trying to achieve by doing so?

It is important to keep in mind the reasons why you are publishing blog post after blog post, all full of ideas and information and giving them away.

Do you know that you might generate more income by creating content and packaging it into the form of an affordable eBook, or perhaps a membership site? In terms of earning efficiency, premium/paid content might be a more lucrative venture than the act of simply giving away all your content away.

Chris Anderson recently suggested that ‘free’ is the future of business because the low cost of the digital web facilities the proliferation of free products, services or content. The web allows you to have greater flexibility in market definition: you can essentially give freebies to some, while selling to others.

Online publications are low-cost ventures. The biggest expense you’ll incur the time you’ll spend for content creation and site management since hosting fees/blogger salaries are scalable and relatively affordable.

On the other hand, cost may be more important in the eyes of your target audience:

From the consumer’s perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of “free” is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.

This difference between cheap and free is what venture capitalist Josh Kopelman calls the “penny gap.” People think demand is elastic and that volume falls in a straight line as price rises, but the truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another. In many cases, that’s the difference between a great market and none at all.

Why I Am Giving Away Content for Free

totoro
Image Credit: totoro walking 3

Many friends have urged me to build a subscription-based membership site or write a eBook for sale. They tell me it’s the next step, because I’ve already developed a sizable audience. Unless you’re running a high volume and popular ad-driven news site, I do agree that its more profitable to write for a paying audience.

But what makes them willing to pay in the first place? Trust. They need to know that they’ll be getting value, before they’ll fork out money from their pocket. In a way, this is why you overlook certain brands in the supermarket or shopping mall, in favor of other more established, familiar and popular brands.

Price alone is never enough to completely offset the lack of trust. You might hook a few early adopters with your free offering but to really generate income in the long term requires the constant improvement of perceived product and brand value.

Monetization can be based on two factors: pageviews or influence. The first involves creating content and using it as a means to get traffic, which converts into ad income. Influence involves creating content to develop your brand equity and then selling services or products which leverage one’s established market trust.

They are not mutually exclusive, although I think a more concentrated focus on either factor from the start will lead to better end results.

Book authors often give away free chapters of their book and/or run a blog which provides free content related to the book in order to generate interest. Apart from serving as lead generators and sales boosters, content has a branding value:

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later.

The truth is, if you want to sell more products or services, you need to develop a reputation which exceeds your slogan, sales letter or promised benefit. Free content is a tool which helps you to develop publicity. It will eventually generate demand for services, products and premium content.

I do have many websites and online projects in mind to execute this year. In the meanwhile, I’m using content to attract attention and build a following. I’m not interested in making Dosh Dosh a big money maker, which is why I’ve refrained from paid editorials, excessive advertising and voluminous posting.

I primarily use this blog as a brand building platform, one that may support the launch of relevant initiatives in the future. That’s my reason for giving away free content. I think its quite important to have a clear idea of the rationale behind ‘free’. Is it just the altruistic wish to share information? Maybe there’s more to it.

Why are you giving away content for free? I would love to hear your opinion.

Image Recognition Problem Finally Solved: Let’s Pay People To Tag Photos

Posted by: on: March 30, 2008

Most people have thousands of digital photos sitting on their hard drive. And the vast majority of those photos aren’t tagged or searchable. Want to find the 300 pictures of your youngest son amongst 10,000 others? It’s not going to happen. Unless you’ve been diligently tagging and categorizing those photos over the years, and who does that?

The problem is obvious. The solution, not so much. A trail of failed startups have tried to tackle the problem with a fairly serious application of technology, including: Riya (now focused on ecommerce via Like.com), Ookles (never launched), and Polar Rose (in private beta for nearly a year), among others.

And now suddenly TagCow appears, which allows users to upload photos and have them tagged within a few minutes. The technology appears to be “magic,” meaning there’s no explanation of it.

If there’s a mountain in the photo, it’s tagged. A dog? yep. A yellow cup? Absolutely. It does people, too. Upload an image of a person and say who it is, and all other images you upload will be tagged with that person, too. The service also integrates with Flickr and will auto tag the photos you have on the service.

Thomas Hawk, the CEO of photo site Zooomr, tried the service and declared it “really, really cool,” although he wonders how it works.

The answer is, humans do it. I note that the TagCow site is careful not to say anything about the tagging process, and never use the word “automated” or anything else that would suggests computers are doing the work. Munjal Shah, the founder of Riya/Like, agreed, noting that it recognized a witch in Thomas’ photo – he says this just isn’t something a computer can do today.

I haven’t confirmed this yet. I’ve emailed the company for a description of how the service works but have yet to hear back. Until we do, I’m betting that humans are the taggers. Note that Google has effectively thrown in the towel and uses humans for this kind of work, too.

TagCow appears to be offering the service for free, so the cost side of the business may be a problem for them down the road. And the business is definitely a little sketchy. Worried about the privacy of your data? Just don’t click on their Privacy Policy or Terms of Use: “Privacy policy is TBD.” and “Legal stuff TBD.” Not exactly a way to build confidence.

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CrunchBase Information

TagCow
TagCow image
Website: www.tagcow.com
Founded: March, 2008

TagCow, launched in March 2008, is a service that tags your photos with descriptive keywords. If there’s a mountain in the photo, it’s tagged. A dog? yep. A yellow cup? Absolutely. It does people, too. Upload an image of a person and say who it… Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

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