So, the long debate about the Free market. It started with Chris Anderson's book, called "Free: The Future of Radical Price". He states how the market is turning towards everything having the price of Free, which is an effective way of selling your product. From that there are numerous blogs going back and forth about whether or not allowing our market world to be entirely FREE. Just the word alone, FREE, has a great ring to it. And that is pretty much Anderson's point.
But the real point I want to make here is the beautiful lesson about this debate between Anderson, Gladwell, Godin's and Cuban's response. They are speaking to the masses on a completely free platform, and writing their perspective and thoughts in a format that they wish to. How much freedom could you get?
The real argument between the Free debate crew is the fact that journalism is losing ground and fast. There is question on how to get on board with online newspapers that are completely free and have the possibility of loosing great writers, or what's worse downgrading the quality of writing. I completely empathize with this issue. I don't agree in getting something for free that deserves payment. There are so many writers, journalists, and editors that deserve to get their paycheck for the groundbreaking work they are doing. The stories that I read everyday, that is a privilege and a service. I empathize for this when a client expects my consultation about a project to be completely free. I wouldn't downgrade my time by offering up my talents and ideas for free. Especially, my time is not worth it. We pay for everything else in our lives, why should we not pay for editorials? It is still a service and a trade.
With that said, I know that there are numerous ways of making money online by other routes, and still being able to offer your product for free. Anderson makes this point when countering Malcolm's opinion. Anderson gives an example about his online dad's website that now makes a good amount of money just by ads alone. Well, that is great for that site, but that is not always the case. YouTube has one of the highest traffic sites and yet it is still losing money. The viral method is working but where is the payment? But then, would YouTube really be as popular if you had to pay for it? Even if it was just .01 cent per upload? Probably not. It is the word, FREE.
Where is our Online market going? Well, let's look at the cable company. I don't have a tv, or cable for that matter but yet I am able to see all the shows I please at the time I please, and almost right after it being aired live on cable. But that doesn't mean I always get it for free. When available, I watch some shows on Hulu for free. Then, there are times when I watch shows on megavideo.com. This is a free service for only 72 minutes. Then after that you can either get tricky by changing your IP address to get to watch another 72 minutes and just keep trading off. Or you can pay for a few months worth of online tv shows and movies for about $20. So, its cheaper than cable, and I don't have a tv so at times I will pay for it.
In the end, I think we will all pay for a service that we want. The things that we pay for everyday that we don't need ever. So, why not editorials? I will continue to my paper newspaper before the online one but I imagine one day it will be paperless and I will buy online as well.
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