The power of free and how to make money online by giving away your work

Making money online by giving things away isn’t just easy, it’s essential. If you ignore the power of free then you are cutting yourself off from rich, multiple streams of income.

Consider the relationship between consumer and producer. One creates something and the other consumes it. But before the producer can transfer his content to the consumer they both need to understand the terms by which that transfer will take place. Broadly speaking there are three options.

1. The producer can charge a price and ask the consumer to pay.
2. The consumer can choose to take the content without the permission of the consumer.
3. The producer can choose to give content to the consumer for free.

Let’s take a moment to muse over each of those three options.

Option 1 is the traditional approach. But, like many traditional business models, it is riddled with holes. In order for the producer to sell his content he must be able to reach a large enough audience. Depending on the nature of the content this audience may need to be huge, often too huge for an individual producer to reach. This disparity between the required audience size and the audience generation power of the producer gives rise to the establishment of the middle man. Record companies, book publishers and film agents all exist to put a producers work in front of the requisite number of eyes and ears.

This method can work. But only for a tiny proportion of producers. The middle men decide which producer’s content gets pushed to the audience leaving the majority of producers out in the cold. Talent and originality are the victims in this scenario as the middle men choose to push the lowest common denominator content to the lowest common denominator market.

If this were the only game in town all producers would have to produce generic content to appeal to the masses. All music would sound like Britney Spears and Television would consist entirely of celebrity reality shows. The blogosphere would be awash with content chosen purely because of its perceived commercial value to a mass audience.

Option 2 is what happens when the consumer decides that they don’t want to pay for content and the producer won’t let them access that content without paying a price. They take it anyway. In the past this was called stealing or shoplifting. Now, with the internet blurring the moral lines, it’s called file sharing.

I know, don’t worry. It’s still stealing. But, and this is the important point here, the consumer no longer thinks of it as stealing since it doesn’t require any effort. Everyone is three clicks away from easily downloading any major label album, any published book, or practically anything they can imagine. If it can be digitized, it can be found and downloaded for free.

There are a million reasons why someone would want to take something without paying for it but I won’t go into that, factually or morally, here. The fact remains that if someone doesn’t want to pay for something, for whatever reason, they won’t pay for it.

When people steal content the producer loses. They don’t get paid. Any middle men that are involved also go hungry. And the consumer simply walks away, often, albeit wrongly, with a clear conscience.

It is very important for me to note at this point that I am not condoning theft. I’m simply acknowledging it.

So, what is an individual content creator, a writer, a designer, a musician, a photographer, an artist or anyone who creates any kind of product or content supposed to do and how are they supposed to make any money?

Enter option 3. When you give away your content for free you remain in control. No middle men are involved and no one is stealing. You don’t require an insurmountably huge audience since the conversion rates for giving something away for free are considerably higher than those when you charge a price.

They key to making option 3 work is to understand the need to make money because of your work, not with your work.

A common misconception is that this approach somehow undervalues your work. Nothing could be further from the truth. To an internet savvy consumer your work appears to have less value when you prevent it’s free distribution. After all, why wouldn’t you want everyone to experience your work?

And now the million dollar question. If you give away your work for free, how to do you make money?

Easy. First of all you need a blog. Your blog will enable you to write about your work, reach your target audience, enable discussion about your work and generally act as a online base of operations. As you distribute your work for free via your blog, in whatever form you like, as a download, a podcast, or simply as writing on the blog itself, your audience will grow naturally and organically as search engines and other like minded blogs start to point in your direction. People who are interested in your work will enjoy visiting your blog, respect and value your decision to share your work with them and become loyal visitors, subscribers and, if your product engenders such feelings, fans.

At this point, you will be building a growing asset. You will have, in increasing amounts, the most valuable commodity on the planet. And that commodity is attention.

With this attention you will be able to attract all kinds of revenue. If you want to make money the easy way then simply allow a sponsor to advertise on your blog. Your audience will be perfectly happy with this arrangement since they will continue to get what they want for free whilst providing valuable traffic for the advertisers who will, in turn, pay you.

From there you will find that the level of attention you are generating will open doors to many other revenue generating opportunities, both online and offline.

The number of income generating opportunities, and the income generated by them, will grow at the same, if not greater, rate as the level of attention you attract.

Ask yourself the question, how much attention would your work attract if you made it available for free? And then, how much money could you leverage with that attention?

Of course, the key to all of this is blogging. Once you have a blog you have a platform from which to distribute your work, attract attention, and, perhaps most crucially, make money. Don’t limit your audience and your income by putting a wall around your best assets. Be open with your work, let people enjoy and discuss it and allow the attention, and blog traffic, to generate your income.