Free is Expensive? Or Vice Versa?
Okay, I’ll be following up this post with a bunch of links. Because I feel like the train of thought I just joined is more like a roller-coaster. It has come at me from multiple sources. And I’m perplexed, bewildered, inspired and curious. I need to write just to clear my head. This is all about the idea of free — I’ll try to keep my contribution short. That way you can spend the next hour day week sifting through the other ideas I’m pointing you to.
Basically there’s an evident trend on the web of cheap-to-free. Your internet connection is cheap. And after that, content is free. Ideas are free. Information is free. This persists in the face of all conventional logic that says stuff is worth money. Copyright is being contravened at a far faster rate than it can be policed. Which essentially means it’s like a backwards lottery. Participate and there’s a good chance that you won’t get caught. But if you do, ouch! There’s a cultural shift suggesting — nay insisting — that trying to defend it is a waste of time and energy. It’s an irrelevant holdover from a bygone era.
On the other hand, work deserves payment. Duh, right? Well that almost sounds like a foreign concept when creatives are launching their own initiatives for no cost. Work that by all rights deserves payment. Photographs are being shared. Software is being released. Books are being published. Movies — even good ones — are being put out there. All for free. The motivations may be different in each case. Some bands may crave exposure. Some authors are looking for a book deal for their next work. And some people get a philanthropic kick out of blogging. But free has another inherent meaning — there is no cost or sacrifice involved in participating. The confluence of reasons for free is having one cultural result: an expectation that more and more should be free, and that the work it takes to make something has no value.
Seth Godin calls this an ‘attention economy’. I like the term. Free is an easy way to get people’s attention. But the problem is that no matter how many people you get clamouring for a free product, you can’t make any money off of it. There’s more than just attention to this economy.
I think free is a great ideal. I like the idea of breaking down the threat of scarcity. If all our stuff could be free, we’d all be infinitely rich. But as long as anything costs any amount of money, free is impossible. I guess ultimately my take on it is that it comes down to story. (Business types call it model.) If your brand is about free (or really, really cheap), then you need to stick with it. And well frankly, once that’s established, good luck trying to change it. There’s a massive draw to free that evaporates at the introduction of any cost. In fact, I can’t think of an online business that survived the transition to monetising a previously free service. How you sustain free is sure to be interesting. It seems to me that it’s better to pick a price that can sustain you, and work your butt off infusing that price with value. I honestly don’t think that’s fundamentally different than it’s ever been.
- Doug Menuez majors on the business end of photography.
- Seth Godin is a marketing expert from New York.
- Malcolm Gladwell wrote a response to a book called Free.
- Chris Anderson wrote the book called Free. (Which, by the way, isn’t.)
- Chase Jarvis is a photographer, and a philosopher, and, and, and…
- Finally, Squidoo is keeping a pretty good record of the entire debate.
July 4th, 2009 at 6:47 am
I like free as an ideal also. I like all boats rising and sharing the resources. We all gotta eat too. The points you make about the failure of those trying to monetize previously free and how free stays free is well taken. I guess to be viable the attention economy is really about the mix– giving some things out free as a way of marketing whatever it is you can and still charge for…?
July 4th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Wow Doug! I didn’t expect you to show up here. Thanks for taking the time!
Yeah, that makes sense. There are certain things that we need to do for free in order to put out a valuable product. It’s the new definition of marketing. Where marketing used to be more or less synonymous with advertising, it’s now a lot bigger and more complicated.
I think Chase’s new video strikes the right chord. Guard what needs to be guarded, and explore everything else you can. He’s finding that there are almost no limits to what he can pursue creatively, and somehow they find a way to filter back to the core.
Also I’m starting to think that the experience is becoming more important than the artefact. If while shooting a wedding, I can create a sense of fun and energy, I’ve even had it that the pictures are secondary. The places that that idea can lead to are mind-boggling.
“Enjoy a studio experience like you’ve seen on America’s Next Top Model!”
“Take in a week in the life of a humanitarian photojournalist.”
“Photograph nature with a freelancer from National Geographic.”
July 6th, 2009 at 4:16 am
I had to comment because I actually learned something! A lot of things actually. You have so many useful and interesting things here, well done.
Funny your comment about the “experience” of a shoot. In photojournalism we often would critique students or each other’s images when it was clear the experience was better than the image. Sometimes you just had to be there. So that’s something I’m used to guarding against as an internal measure of a photograph. But apart from the impact of an image, the measure of the experience is a great way to assess the quality of your life. Every shoot should have a sense of fun as you say, or be meaningful in some way, life is very, very short!!
Best
Doug
July 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I’ve been reflecting on this. I think that some of the high-end photographers who are offering workshops are getting this really right. Who wouldn’t love to be with McNally on a shoot, and receive a glimmer of his insight? He could easily make the rest of his photographic career on workshops, and providing said experiences. Lots of people have good cameras, some even have a D3x. But there’s only one Joe McNally.
And your point is well made — a great experience doesn’t inherently make a great image. My idea doesn’t work if there’s emotional distance, as there almost always is in photojournalism. But if the image contains some kind of intimate connection to the viewer’s experience, it’s a win. If it’s well-timed, well-exposed, well-focussed and well-framed too, then it’s a huge win.