There’s a number of good reasons for offering a free service or product, you could be trying to build a customer base, position yourself in the market, gain experience in a new field or simply want to give something back to your community.
But in this age of Google and Bing where knowledge is free and skills a cheap commodity how sustainable are the free models of doing business?
The Cooks Source plagiarism story and Gavin Heaton’s recent post on Why Social Media Consultants Are Broke illustrate the problems many knowledge workers are having in the new economy.
Gavin quotes Jessica Gottlieb on her Stop Working For Free You Tube clip. With Gavin’s point being that most social media people work for the love of what they do, not for money. Jessica’s views are a splash of cold water in the faces of those who write for at best a few pennies in the hope it will lead to something bigger.
While both Gavin and Jessica are right, there’s a bigger issue at work — that there’s no market for this work. There may be a need for it, but there is no one prepared to pay for it and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people prepared to work for nothing.
The plagiarism carried out by the Cooks Source magazine is a good example of the free trap where Judith Griggs, the editor, not only believes she is doing the right thing stealing someone’s work but that she actually does the writer a favour.
It’s the idea you’re actually doing a writer a favour by ripping off their work that’s probably irritated most people criticising Judith. It wouldn’t be so bad if Judith did actually do anything to help the writers beyond cutting and pasting their text.
Sadly Judith isn’t alone in this and once you’re taken advantage of by her and the millions of others with these attitudes, you’ll find the demands for free escalate. All of a sudden you’re travelling around the country, taking support calls and being pestered to do all manner of further free stuff.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had to deal with a culture of free. Bill Gates dealt with in the same problem in 1976 where Micro-Soft’s Altair computer programs were being copied. His Homebrew Computer Club letter has become a sort of computer industry equivalent of Luther’s 95 thesis.
Gates’ letter though was written before the Internet where a culture of free has developed, driven often by corporations giving stuff away because capital has been cheap and labour often free. This developed in the dot com boom and has continued every since.
We’re now seeing the capital dry up and the question is how long the labour can afford giving things away. It may be the US and European recessions prolong that free supply as desperate people seek opportunities.
As The Joker said in the Dark Knight movie; “if you’re good at something, why give it away for free?” If you’re doing something for free, identify why and set some goals on what you want that free work to achieve.