October 6, 2008 73 Comments

Picnics

free as in beer What should be free? Who pays for it? Where does it all go? Should blogging and money be kept far apart from each other? Should blogs have ads? Are all links really paid, as the story goes? How does money impact authenticity? Who should pay for the picnic? Let’s talk about money. Monetization. Loot.

These are questions that we all have opinions about. People and companies have been vilified for their choices. The righteous burn their effigies on the front lawn of any blog that mixes free content with advertising. The very notion that commerce and information exchange be permitted to mix seems incongruous. Never mind the fact that media works that way. Never mind the fact that CHURCH works that way. There has to be a strong distance between the exchanges, or else it seems evil. You’re charging your community, etc.

I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. Partly because it’s my job to understand how to mix information and money-making. The other part of it is because I like to help people figure out how to do business in the Internet age. I experiment, share the results, and experiment some more.

I also run conferences, both professionally, and for passion. Between media making, conferences, and the other ways that I work in the information-for-money business, I’ve got some ideas, and I’m going to share my perspective. I predict this post will be one of the more polarizing of my last several months. You’ll either get it and agree, or you’ll tell me why the world must all function on what’s free. I can argue both sides of the coin.

The Triangle

In the fall of 2006, I quit my day job and joined the circus. Jeff Pulver, legendary VoIP pioneer and long-time producer of the VON conference series hired me. In the waning months of 2007, I parted ways and joined Stephen Saber’s CrossTech Media. During this same time frame, I also worked with Christopher S. Penn and Whitney Hoffman on PodCamps.

In events, there’s a triangle. I learned this mostly from Jeff. If you can, the best of all worlds goes like this:

* Attract the brilliant people and make them the community.
* Charge the businesses who support this community for the event.
* Make it worth it for those businesses, so that they want to keep supporting the event.

So, if you want your “friends” to come to a conference, make the event such that it will help them do their job better. Then, don’t ask your friends for money. Ask their employers for money (ticket cost). Then, ask exhibitors and sponsors who want the friends as customers for money. Then, you have enough money to run a conference, and make a living trying to build information.

For the content, focus super hard on the people/friends. Don’t look to what the sponsors/exhibitors think the story is. They know more about the today than they do the tomorrow. Unless you make friends with tomorrow-focused companies (my favorite plan).

That’s kind of traditional conferences in a nutshell. It’s WAY not easy. But that’s the rough premise.

Unconferences, like PodCamp and BarCamp and the like, do it differently. The premise is like this: we can all get together for a minimal cost and run something that’s useful, without making it a business unto itself. We can subsist, and everyone will leave better educated.

With PodCamps, we’ve built and built on the experience, such that the ones we run in Boston cost more than a typical *.Camp, but the payload is (hopefully) much more focused. We’ve asked for more money from the community, but we’ve turned that back around into a quality event. We find sponsors who want access to our community, and then we try to matchmake that relationship a little, so that everyone understand’s each other’s potential value. BUT we do it without a lot of heavy-handedness at PodCamps. It’s more organic. That’s the whole unconference thing.

YOU can start an unconference. You don’t need anyone’s permission.

So there are two models.

Content on Websites

The web has crushed a lot of former money makers. Look at newspapers. Look at magazines. We are VERY used to getting our content for free. We love it free. And we are finding more and more ways to get top shelf, quality content for free. It’s a great and wonderful thing. How many of us would pay a few bucks for a blog? Not very many. (Well wait, aren’t Kindle users doing just that?)

So there are all kinds of people churning out quality content, and the basic premise is that they’ll get their money elsewhere. I sure do. Lots of people do. But let’s go deeper for a second.

You learn actionable things from ProBlogger, from CopyBlogger, from Seth Godin, from me, and from others. All that content is free. It’s out there for you to learn from, profit from, build business with, and hopefully succeed. Heck, if we’re not helping you succeed, then why are we doing this daily?

Often discounted in these conversations are blogs about making money online. Those fall into another whole category of the web. And yet, some of those folks, like Ted Murphy are out there just trying to come up with new ways to build better relationships between people who have something to sell and people who want to facilitate that sale. There’s a whole culture out there figuring this stuff out, and I’m getting to know more and more of them. As I do, my mindset on how blogs interact with advertising and marketing has changed a great deal.

My Current Thinking Boiled Down

  • Making money isn’t evil. HOW you make money can be. Keeping the whole picture in place helps. (For instance, in my case, I sell certain services and information – like the New Marketing Summit, but then I give others away free/cheap – my blog and PodCamp).
  • Disclosure is key. If you’re going to sell something on your site, disclose that you’ve got a relationship with that company/product. ( I show my disclosures on my About page).
  • Maintain the triangle. I don’t want YOU to pay for my content. I want people who need my help professionally to pay for my distilled thinking.
  • Keep context. My site is about educating you. If it becomes about products to market, that’s a context swap. If I decide to build a site about selling you things, I’ll make that another URL, and you can opt to visit or not.
  • Someone has to pay for the picnic. There are some really great bloggers out there who are blogging a bit less lately. I won’t name them. They have jobs that require them to focus down hard on revenues right now. I try my hardest to have the things I’m paid for (like conferences) keep me out here on the blanket giving away delicious snacks. But someone always has to pay for the picnic.

Your Take

It’s your turn to weigh in. Why should everything be free? Why are ads evil? Where do you think this money should be made? If you were running the business, [chrisbrogan.com], or Scobleizer.com , or Annhandley.com , or whoever, what would you do differently? How would YOU make your money?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Photo credit, Timothy Lloyd

Related posts:

  1. Advice for People Attending Conferences
  2. The Big Risk for Corporate Trust Agents

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  • http://dulemba.com Elizabeth O. Dulemba

    I’m glad a musician piped in on this thread – we have similar issues.
    As a children’s book author and illustrator, this is a subject I (and my fellow creators) deal with constantly. There are many expectations involved when people request authors to speak at their school or event. It’s “for the children” – shouldn’t it be free? Never mind the days of preparation, travel expenses, office time lost, or that teachers get paid for the same service (although not much, granted).
    People value the books we create, but they often forget to value the creator. We have bills to pay too. School visits are one of the main ways children’s book authors and illustrators make their living (the average income is not high) and they can be profound experiences for the children. Many schools have budgets for this, while others have to apply for grants or organize fund-raisers. For those who flat out can’t afford to hire a speaker, most creators give back through free materials on their websites, or by donating one free engagement a year. Personally, I give away tons of free activities on my website and a new coloring page every week on my blog which has proven to be enormously popular. The question is, when is it too much?
    I give away what I do to attract interest to my books. The more I sell, the more I can keep doing what I love. But I am constantly hit with requests to do more, more, more – for free. The message seems to be, if you love what you do, you have a social obligation to give it away. Under those demanding expectations, how do we make enough money to continue writing and illustrating?
    My 2 cents,
    e
    dulemba.com

  • http://dulemba.com Elizabeth O. Dulemba

    I’m glad a musician piped in on this thread – we have similar issues.
    As a children’s book author and illustrator, this is a subject I (and my fellow creators) deal with constantly. There are many expectations involved when people request authors to speak at their school or event. It’s “for the children” – shouldn’t it be free? Never mind the days of preparation, travel expenses, office time lost, or that teachers get paid for the same service (although not much, granted).
    People value the books we create, but they often forget to value the creator. We have bills to pay too. School visits are one of the main ways children’s book authors and illustrators make their living (the average income is not high) and they can be profound experiences for the children. Many schools have budgets for this, while others have to apply for grants or organize fund-raisers. For those who flat out can’t afford to hire a speaker, most creators give back through free materials on their websites, or by donating one free engagement a year. Personally, I give away tons of free activities on my website and a new coloring page every week on my blog which has proven to be enormously popular. The question is, when is it too much?
    I give away what I do to attract interest to my books. The more I sell, the more I can keep doing what I love. But I am constantly hit with requests to do more, more, more – for free. The message seems to be, if you love what you do, you have a social obligation to give it away. Under those demanding expectations, how do we make enough money to continue writing and illustrating?
    My 2 cents,
    e
    dulemba.com

  • http://www.pistachioconsulting.com Laura “Pistachio” Fitton

    There’s definitely something in common between the little bits of content, advice, attention, feedback that are expected to be “free no matter what” and the tragedy of the commons.

    Each individual perceives that they are consuming only a negligible quantity of the commons — the blogger’s ideas and intelligence, the event’s value add, the colleague’s “brain to pick” (OUCH, I think, EVERY time someone asks to pick my brain) — and yet cumulatively it overloads and degrades the resource. It’s not sustainable. Sometimes the beneficiaries of the commons are not happy with the kind of tradeoffs (price) they really *should* expect to pay in order to partake of the commons.

  • http://www.pistachioconsulting.com Laura “Pistachio” Fitton

    There’s definitely something in common between the little bits of content, advice, attention, feedback that are expected to be “free no matter what” and the tragedy of the commons.

    Each individual perceives that they are consuming only a negligible quantity of the commons — the blogger’s ideas and intelligence, the event’s value add, the colleague’s “brain to pick” (OUCH, I think, EVERY time someone asks to pick my brain) — and yet cumulatively it overloads and degrades the resource. It’s not sustainable. Sometimes the beneficiaries of the commons are not happy with the kind of tradeoffs (price) they really *should* expect to pay in order to partake of the commons.

  • http://chrisbrogan.com chrisbrogan

    @Ted – you know how there’s a group of peers, and then there’s a group of customers? I think blogs are unique (and other online media properties like blogs) insofar as they are often mix-and-match with who’s on them.

    Thus, we have a little bit of separating to do. I have to extract my customer base from my peer base, so that my customers will find their way to the products and services I create, while my peers and friends feel they’re still learning and sharing with me.

    My customers are more than welcome to learn from my peers. I’m a big fan of sharing. That’s what I do best.

    But you’re right insofar as there has to be some kind of dividing line on what one might buy or not.

  • http://chrisbrogan.com chrisbrogan

    @Ted – you know how there’s a group of peers, and then there’s a group of customers? I think blogs are unique (and other online media properties like blogs) insofar as they are often mix-and-match with who’s on them.

    Thus, we have a little bit of separating to do. I have to extract my customer base from my peer base, so that my customers will find their way to the products and services I create, while my peers and friends feel they’re still learning and sharing with me.

    My customers are more than welcome to learn from my peers. I’m a big fan of sharing. That’s what I do best.

    But you’re right insofar as there has to be some kind of dividing line on what one might buy or not.

  • http://www.steven-sanders.com Steven-Sanders

    It doesn’t seem to me like anyone has a problem with radio and the advertising they do there.

    So why should blogging be so different. Both are simply a person putting content for others to hear about or read, and then selling ad space, or displaying some sort of ad for a curious audience to visit.

    I say if you don’t like ads, don’t click them. Just read the content, and go about your merry way.

  • http://dcblog.net Doug C.

    I can understand ads for big well-known sites where the ad might actually generate some small amount of revenue, but not for smaller ones. Ads are like pop-ups; they’re annoying. As a small blog myself I would prefer not to annoy my visitors.

  • http://www.steven-sanders.com Steven-Sanders

    It doesn’t seem to me like anyone has a problem with radio and the advertising they do there.

    So why should blogging be so different. Both are simply a person putting content for others to hear about or read, and then selling ad space, or displaying some sort of ad for a curious audience to visit.

    I say if you don’t like ads, don’t click them. Just read the content, and go about your merry way.

  • http://dcblog.net Doug C.

    I can understand ads for big well-known sites where the ad might actually generate some small amount of revenue, but not for smaller ones. Ads are like pop-ups; they’re annoying. As a small blog myself I would prefer not to annoy my visitors.

  • http://www.alistercameron.com/ Alister Cameron // Blogologist

    Another whole side of this conversation, one that is not really covered here that I can see, is the question of business models.

    Within the bounds of what we might all agree are OK ways to make a quid, there is still a lot of choice and variety in terms of business models. Here there are some who know how to manage cashflow and others who don’t.

    Business model tweaking can mean the difference between making it to riches, and going broke on the way there.

    -Alister

  • http://www.alistercameron.com/ Alister Cameron // Blogologist

    Another whole side of this conversation, one that is not really covered here that I can see, is the question of business models.

    Within the bounds of what we might all agree are OK ways to make a quid, there is still a lot of choice and variety in terms of business models. Here there are some who know how to manage cashflow and others who don’t.

    Business model tweaking can mean the difference between making it to riches, and going broke on the way there.

    -Alister

  • http://www.nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan

    Interesting read. The fact that free content exists makes it more difficult to attract a community, let alone drive revenue streams from them. I don’t believe that blogging is a long-term sustainable business model, but I do believe that it is perfect for building a brand. Learning how to use your brand to improve the lives of others while making a living is a genuine way to make money without selling every affiliate product known to man. I like to highlight some of my interests on my blog, but if people don’t want to buy them that is fine. However, I am a firm believer that if you help to open people’s worlds to new ideas, like you have been doing, then they are going to show their appreciate with money spent.

  • http://www.nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan

    Interesting read. The fact that free content exists makes it more difficult to attract a community, let alone drive revenue streams from them. I don’t believe that blogging is a long-term sustainable business model, but I do believe that it is perfect for building a brand. Learning how to use your brand to improve the lives of others while making a living is a genuine way to make money without selling every affiliate product known to man. I like to highlight some of my interests on my blog, but if people don’t want to buy them that is fine. However, I am a firm believer that if you help to open people’s worlds to new ideas, like you have been doing, then they are going to show their appreciate with money spent.

  • http://justinkownacki.blogspot.com/ Justin Kownacki

    A member of an arts organizations here in Pittsburgh was recently saying — during the free “gallery crawl” event we have every 3 months — that all these people coming down to the arts venues doesn’t translate to profits throughout the year.

    As I see it, the problem isn’t that they’re spending too much time giving things away for free. It’s that they’re NOT spending enough time directing those free attendees and converting them into subscribers / paying customers / supporters of the arts. They bring them in, but then they don’t know what to do with them, so the setup fails.

    Having an audience is great, but you also need a plan to engage them and make them a part of your own forward momentum, all while providing them something that improves their lives as well.

  • http://justinkownacki.blogspot.com/ Justin Kownacki

    A member of an arts organizations here in Pittsburgh was recently saying — during the free “gallery crawl” event we have every 3 months — that all these people coming down to the arts venues doesn’t translate to profits throughout the year.

    As I see it, the problem isn’t that they’re spending too much time giving things away for free. It’s that they’re NOT spending enough time directing those free attendees and converting them into subscribers / paying customers / supporters of the arts. They bring them in, but then they don’t know what to do with them, so the setup fails.

    Having an audience is great, but you also need a plan to engage them and make them a part of your own forward momentum, all while providing them something that improves their lives as well.

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  • http://www.bluescluescoloringpage.com/ Jeremy

    To plan for a Blues Clues Party, start out by finding some pre made cards of the Blues Clues characters. These should be readily available with most online party suppliers. Can’t find any and have good home printer? Then find some good graphics of your child’s favorite characters online. Or, look for some paper or cards that have some dog prints on them!

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    Thank you, Chris. You did a good job.

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