The Attention Economy is Free
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In the Attention Economy (coined by Georg Franck), Fame often comes well before Fortune. Millions of techies and creatives are living out that popular book from the 80's, Do What You Love and The Money Will Follow. Watch this episode to start understanding how and why it makes sense to give things away on the internet.
Check out CC Chapman's, Managing the Gray podcast to learn more about the "Social Media Playground" and how it can affect your business.
Here's a related blog post over at Bare Feet Studios, How to be happy paying for stuff.
P.S. Welcome back to BizzyCast! We started audio and video podcasting back in 2005, however once we launched Beach Walks with Rox, we pretty much abandoned our BizzyCast episodes.
We're back in the game and very excited to re-starting the conversation with you. The internet is approaching hyperspeed, but over here, the chill is on as we do what we do best: make the hard things easy. Please hang in with us the first few days as all of our feeds get updated and the bugs get squashed.
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Reader's Comments
The only thing I want to say right now, is this.
I do what I do because it makes me happy.
I want to get paid to do what I do - however, I won't be happy if I am doing what I do for "someone else".
Strange as that may seem...perhaps it is about creative freedom or something similar.
Also, a big reason that people are not paying for much online, is because nobody is selling.
We've all started out trying to see how large the numbers can be, and how quickly. The only way to do that was to give it away.
I think that you were mentioning that a bit, when you said that once the masses can fathom what the value really is, then the money will come. However, if it is to do the work for someone else, then again, for me personally, it would not be satisfying.
Welcome back.
Nice to hear some new media geeking out.
"Information wants to be free!"
Lots of open source folks offer ways to donate money to stuff that they release as well. Not sure how that works out for them, but I know Joe Hewitt of FireBug went through a debate as to whether to charge for his incredible firefox plugin or release it as open source. Thankfully, for the benefit of the entire Internet he released it as open source under the Mozilla Public License 1.1.
The thing I always hear people in the open source world say is the difference between free speech and free beer. It's a bit confusing for me the difference sometimes, but from the GNU website, they say, "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer."
Something to chew on.
Looking forward to seeing you out at Pixelodeon this weekend.
-Kent.
Free speech vs free beer is definitely something to chew on, even though some of it is "hard to swallow." It seems easier for people to pay for stuff, as compared to ideas or the results of mental effort. I cannot fathom where we would be at this point without the open source sw community, and from our experience very few people use the donate button. I think it is more of a tangential experience though. I give a little here, take a little there, buy something else over there.
It's like all-volunteer clubs: some people complain the a few people do most all the work. True. But while I may be a taker in this club, did you realize that over in this other club, I am volunteering 10 hours a week? The energy keeps moving, though not always in direct one to one relationships as in the typical commerce transaction.
As for working for others v self, that changes everything too.
Interesting vlog on Power of Influence. There's a yoga teacher named Eoin Finn http://vancouveryoga.com who offers several free MP3 downloads of his yoga classes. After trying his excellent audio classes, not only did I send him a paypal donation, I also later purchased his dvds and am thinking of going to Canada next year to take his yoga teacher training.
I've been watching Rox on Beachwalks for a few weeks and it occurred to me that Beachwalks is much more interesting and valuable than reading the local newspaper. So I sent her some money too. (I wish my husband would stop renewing the paper subscription!)
It's interesting how people's mindsets limit what they will pay for. Think about how much money people spend at fast food restaurants and well known coffee shops every day. And yet they will say they 'can't afford' other things. I guess that's where the Power of Influence comes in. It saddens me that what seems to have the biggest POI in our culture today are things that are (to me) empty of real nourishment (spiritually, mentally and physically).
I am a great believer in free. I have been providing free downloads, free podcasts and now free teleseminars.
Its a great way to contribute to those that are struggling and those that have usually are happy to buy something else. Not everything can be free though. As with everything it's about balance.
It would be great to have one big website where all free resources are made available. I am sure there must be something out there! Maybe i'll include something in my forum
NOW I get it! Thanks so much Rox!
Me Ka Aloha,
Shawn
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