Thoughts on Monitizing Content Online

An article by Ryan    2 Comments

Them: So what do you do again?

Me: My partners and I run a website where we teach people how to play the ukulele online. We have around 7500 registered members now and get like 20k uniques a month. Not great but it’s a pretty good start considering we started with $300 and spent no money on advertising.

Them: Oh wow, so all those people pay to use your site?

Me: No, we give away all the content for free

Them: … How do you make money then?

Me: Well there’s a lot of ways, we sell ads, we have an online store… We focus on diversifying our income streams so we’re not dependent on one area of our business.  Right now we’re mainly focused on building our brand equity though.

Them: Why don’t you charge your members?

Me: Because that’s not how you do it online anymore.

Them: I don’t get it…

I think I go through some version of this conversation monthly when someone who is not familiar with the internet asks me what I do. Every once in a while,  a guy or girl will just come out and tell me, “You know, you should be charging for your content on Ukulele Underground.”  I usually just agree with them rather than objecting. The truth is, I don’t believe in that method of monitizing content online, I believe that business model is outdated and a thing of the 90s. When I say that method, I’m talking about locking down content in a paid subscription sort of way. In today’s market, especially when dealing with smart, younger, savvy users, you simply can’t do it. Here are my reasons.

1. People my age and younger who have grown up with the internet grew up with the concept that content on the internet is free. We grew up with the original Napster, these younger kids are pros at bitTorrent and file sharing services like mediafile. The technology and the services available today make sharing content easier than ever. If there is something these kids want to find online they will be able to find it. So why even attempt to charge them, they’re going to pirate it anyways. What makes it even worse is that there will be people who will pay for your content, and when they find out that others are obtaining it for free, they will feel slighted and cheated even if they did things the  right way. Just knowing that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night.

2. Free content leads to faster growth. By leaving your content free and unlocked, you facilitate word of mouth marketing and your users will do your advertising for you. Now, for this method to work, your content will need to be legit but if you pump out good quality stuff regularly, they’ll keep coming back and they will bring their friends. If you instead decided to lock down your content from the start, you create a barrier of entry to your content that most visitors will not bother breaking. This goes back to my previous post about how online trust must be earned. If you give visitors no reason to trust you, chances are they won’t and won’t come back.

3. If your stuff is good, people will still buy it later anyways if it’s packaged correctly. On paper doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would anyone buy something that you can easily get online for free? Well the truth is, people do buy it.  They buy it because they think your content is awesome and want to support you, they buy it for gifts for their friends and family, they buy it as collectors items. Whatever their reasoning, people do buy content that they have access to online, even if they’ve already read or watched it. I’ve done so myself in the past.  The idea that if you give something away for free, noone will pay for it later just simply isnt true. We get tons of e-mails asking us if we’re ever going to put our lessons on DVD because people want to buy them. We probably will do this sometime in the near future.

At the end of the day, the fact that the vast majority of the people I interact with don’t get what we’re doing is great. Let them think I’m clueless and an idiot for giving away this stuff for free. My partners and I get it, and we’ll have the advantage and head start while they try to figure it out.