Free vs Paid Content

An experimental talk where I discuss the merits of producing everything for free and ways to build in sustainability.

Transcript

1. Open Source & Blogging: Power of Free Content
   to Empower or Enslave
   
2. ! ! jQuery UI Datepicker ! MarcGrabanski.com ! LOTS of UI Dev Who? Marc Grabanski
3. ! ! ! Publisher of: Currently... UI/UX Development Consultant http://FrontendMasters.com
4. This Talk • Free ideology • My path and mistakes • Benefits and detriments of producing free content • Sustainability of free
5. The Free Ideology • Education should be free. • Do free things for the community is a requirement. • Release free software and tools is always the better choice.
6. Equal Access
7. Benefits of
   Free Ideology • Viewed as altruistic. • Gain influence & connections. • Speaking engagements. • Impact lots of people. • Receive good job offers.
8. • Viewed as altruistic. • Gain influence & connections. • Speaking engagements. • Impact lots of people. • Receive good job offers. Benefits of
   Free Ideology Can’t do it for these reasons!
9. Getting Started Making Free Things
10. My Path
11. Passion-First
    Career Choice
12. Web Career Wasn’t Recommended Dot-com crash. No jobs! Everyone said “stay away” from the web.
13. • I started web design regardless. • To me, the web was awesome and important. • I’ll figure it out... Beginning My Career
14. “Be a Java developer, you’ll make way more money.” Against Economics, Towards Passion
15. Web UI is what’s most important ...IMO
16. Passion-First Writing
17. Open Source & Blogging...Why?
18. Getting Started Blogging
19. Staring Line • No starting audience. • Writing mostly just to remember things. • Published research / things I’m interested in.
20. Passion is Your Fuel for Free
21. Blogging
22. People Notice Passion-First Writing
23. Growth
24. Passion-First
    Coding
25. jQuery UI Datepicker Used by a few ’06-07 Used by everyone ’08-13
26. Workshops and Conferences • Spoke at 40+ conferences • Italy, Ireland, Israel • Met a lot of amazing people
27. All for Free
28. Benefits of Free • Trust and Influence • Connections • Opportunities
29. Personal Tour of Jerusalem
30. But is Free Holy?
31. I Killed My Blog
32. Could Have Been Avoided!
33. Things That Sucked • Created a lot of work to maintain projects and articles. • Didn’t want to bankroll my work with a big company. • Had bills to pay...blogging was taking up tons of time.
34. Tangible Detriments • Free is Expected (700+ emails to debug people’s code problems) • Wallet is empty (I wanted to remain independent). • No long-term sustainability.
35. Is Free Sustainable? • Free products get sold, close down or weird things happen to them all the time. • Turn data into targeted ad space. • Or corporate sponsored.
36. Potential Rewards
    of Free 1. Page Views 2. Social Following 3. RSS & RSS-to-email Subscribers 4. Email Subscribers 5. Ad Revenue 6. Product Revenue (Books, etc) 7. New Job
37. 1. Page Views • Measures how many people visit your site. • Not very actionable. !
38. 2. Social Following • Proof of thought leadership. • Not everyone sees every tweet or Facebook post.
39. 3. RSS &
    RSS to Email • Proof of readership. • Not everyone reads RSS.
 ...people ditched RSS.
40. 4. Email Newsletter Subscribers • Personal communication (feels 1-to-1) • Highly trackable and actionable
41. 5. Ad Revenue • $ = Sustainability • Overhead to manage ad space • Potentially annoying to users
42. 6. Product Revenue • Highly sustainable • Repeat customers
 “Stacking bricks” • Value builds over time
43. 7. New Job • Usually a result of what you did for free. • Usually awesome and more in-line with your interests.
44. 1. Page Views 2. Social Following 3. RSS & RSS-to-email Subscribers 4. Email Subscribers 5. Ad Revenue 6. Product Revenue (Books, etc) 7. New Job My Rewards
45. Succeeded at idealism. http://marcgrabanski.com/articles/developing-value- stronger-than-money
46. I failed at sustainability.
47. Avoid my mistakes...
48. Build a holistic following, 
 not just RSS and social.
49. Credit cards and email addresses means they like your stuff.
50. 100% free isn’t always holy or righteous.
51. Think sustainability.
52. Publish paid products. 
 Can start with a $4.99 PDF using e-junkie or leanpub
53. Maybe you won’t get rich...
54. But you’ll gain relationships with people who like your work enough to pay.
55. Customers grow with you as you get better over time and release more products. http://www.noeltock.com/startup-snippets/the-long-game/
56. Long term sustainability 
 is honorable.
57. Sustainable operations can produce more free content
58. Questions? ! Marc Grabanski @1marc