The End of Free Content

The magazine and newspaper industry is flopping like a wet pancake in the wind. Circulation is dropping, advertisers are flocking, and readers are moving online.¹

When paid content became free and easy to access, ad revenue dropped like a shrink wrapped goose in a hailstorm. Ask the average blogger how much they make by giving their content away. Then ask your local newspaper editor the same. Both will sheepishly display their net worth: some crusty epidermis from the pit of their belly buttons topped with an economy-sized serving of Polyblend.

Change is in the air

Small independent content creators who long to write for profit as well as pleasure are slowly coming to the same conclusion as big publications: to build a healthy business with their slaved-over content, they need to start selling some of it. Sadly, there are two cracks in this otherwise rose-tinted dream:

1. It’s tough to set up a paid subscription service.
2. It’s even harder to get people to subscribe.

Faced with the reality that most readers would rather take up the French Horn than pay a monthly subscription for stuff that was once free, many bloggers and corporations are falling back on two tried-and-tested models:

1. The advertising model
2. The cross-selling model

Sure enough, some have found success with these, but there’s a different and much underused way to make money with content that I’d like to air today. It’s one I’ve been considering myself, and that I think could prove to be a great option for you too.

The truth about earning a living online

The reality is this: while many people are building profitable businesses by leveraging their content, hardly anyone is profiting directly from the content itself. To me, that’s a real shame. More importantly than that, though:

Traditional online business models force a conflict of interest: they must accommodate advertisers and spin-off product offers whilst attracting visitors who care about neither.

If you don’t think that building a business around your output instead of with it is odd, stop and think for a second. If you go to Apple’s site today, they’ll sell you a Mac. If you visit John Varvatos, they’ll sell you a suit. If you go to Hotel Chocolat, they’ll sell you their fancy choccies. Then visit The Guardian, who’ll happily give you all their output for free and then try to flog you a solar powered torch.

When it gets really silly

Weirder still are the sites that try to flog you a metaproduct from the top shelf of the Irony Store: Brian Clark sells a course about selling courses; Alexis Dawes sells an ebook about how to sell ebooks; Yaro Starak makes money online by selling access to a site that teaches you how to make money online; I even have the audacity to sell you a book about paper trumping technology that’s only available as an electronic download.

It’s pretty harmless to poke fun at these things, but — in truth — leveraging your content to draw an income through other products and services is probably the best option available to anyone hoping to build an online business right now, which is why we’re all trying it. If only there was another way…

The other way

Isn’t it time that people in the business of content creation started selling content? I’d like to see online publishers building businesses with their content – not on the back of it. I have a lot of respect for any online publisher who can make a living using the regular models, but I can’t help wonder: Why not just sell some of the content that people are already coming to your site to read or download?

The new model: micropayments

The new model is simple. Continue to provide free content just as you are, but sell your more unique content for a small one-off fee or ‘micropayment’. You choose what you sell, your audience still gets a stream of free stuff, plus they get to support you by buying paid content if it’s relevant to them. Hopefully, everyone wins. With me so far? Read on to learn how to make it work.

Hang on! Does micropaid content as a business model work?

Sure! The truth is that it’s already catching on fast. Micropayment is the same concept that’s rapidly turning Apple’s App Store into a billion dollar business,² and it’s been trickling down to other forms of content for a while.

A great case in point is Peepcode, which sells video and PDF tutorials for programmers at $9 a shot. They’ve chosen to only market paid content, but I think it’s a model that would work well with free content mixed in too.

How do you sell content online?

There are a wealth of services that will help you sell downloadable goods online and automatically deliver them to your customers. You’ll need a bit of patience to set something up, but once you do, it’s usually plain sailing. Here are a few worth exploring:

1. E-junkie offers a cheap, standalone service that includes an affiliate scheme, anti-fraud measures and automated delivery.³
2. Shopify lets you list electronic goods, and Fetch can help you to distribute them automatically.
3. Magento is a powerful open source e-commerce solution that lets you sell electronic downloads and much more.
4. Shopp for WordPress is a beautiful option that’s designed to be quick and easy to setup and manage.
5. WP e-Commerce for WordPress is a popular solution that offers electronic downloads, though I’ve not tried this one myself.⁴

The bad news is that selling downloadable goods is still much harder than it needs to be to become ubiquitous. The good news is that, with more people taking an interest in selling files online, I think we’ll start to see other solutions emerge soon. (If you use and love a different one, feel free to add a note in the comments.)

What might a micropaid content site look like?

You’re reading one right now. Check out the Put Things Off homepage to see how I’ve tried to cleanly split free and paid content. The mindset I adopted when redesigning my site for a micropayment model was to start thinking of it as a business instead of a blog; I removed the usual clutter you see on popular blogs and pushed the content to the forefront, then charged for some of it. It’s been working well so far.

What’s in it for you?

• Potential to earn more;
• Spend more time writing;
• Fewer (or zero) ads;
• A stronger bond with your readers;
• You’re helping to cultivate a content economy.

What’s in it for your readers?

• No subscription fees;
• Fewer (or zero) ads;
• They pay for the valuable content they choose;
• They’re helping you to build and improve your site;
• The warm fuzzy feeling that they’ve made your day by supporting you.

Isn’t there a chance that some of my readers will go elsewhere?

Sure. It will probably happen. Kevin Kelly argues that you only need 1,000 true fans to build a business, and I think he’s right.

Some of your audience won’t want to pay for stuff, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as you can build a core fan base who truly value your output, you’ll do OK by selling content.

Isn’t the Web supposed to be about free content?

It’s a lovely myth, isn’t it? Turns out that Ted Nelson, who invented hypertext in the 1960s to link Web pages, originally intended them as a way to take micropayments for content.⁵

I believe that paid content and free content can peacefully co-exist online — the answer isn’t to adopt an all or nothing business model. As such, I’m not proposing an end to all free content. Just some of it.

What about search engines?

Some people will be put off by protecting content because they’ll lose search traffic that they might have got. My advice is not to worry about it too much. Just provide a summary of your paid content openly in a dedicated page about that product.

Besides, search engines have been piggybacking your free content to make money for years.

What type of content sells best?

From my experience so far, the content that people will pay for falls into one of these categories:

• It solves a problem. (How-to guides, tutorials, screencasts, video info…)
• It entertains. (Music, poetry, short stories, novellas…)
• It provides current, valuable, inside information. (Reports, survey data, tips…)
• It helps people to make money. (Without being too trashy.)
• It makes people look better in the eyes of their peers or customers. (Project management web apps, for example.)

How much should I charge?

Tailor the figure to your audience. If you’re selling short stories via the iPhone App Store, you might struggle to charge more than about £1 per copy. If you’re Tim O’Reilly and you’re selling targeted PDF reports from an established and well-respected platform, you can comfortably command $399 a copy.

How do I get people to buy my stuff?

Provide something of value. Then simply ask them. Failing that:

• Limit the number of steps between page load and checkout.
• Try not to force people into cost-value decisions with multiple purchase options.
• Highlight your paid content in a site-wide sidebar and page footer as well as on your homepage. Many of your visitors will arrive at your subpages first, and a lot of them will never see your homepage.
• Give people something to take away — downloads are probably better bets than selling access to content with passwords and logins.

Closing thoughts

Of course, there’s no great harm in continuing to develop your own products and services and sell them alongside your free content, ((Read as: I’ll probably flog you more of my crap before the year ends. )) but I think there’s a strong case for building an economy based on content too.

If Joel Comm can sell over 39,000 copies of his iFart application in one day,⁶ there must be some hope for the rest of us.