I once made a mistake.
(Unbelievable I know. Still with me?)
I was working with a large subscription adult website. The kind of operation that looks as if it’s run by a model out of her apartment, but in fact employs full-time legal counsel, offers services to other web companies, and provides good medical for a few hundred Californians.
Subscriber numbers had been level for a while, and the company founder was keen to try a stunt she’d profited from in the past. I was charged with boosting business and felt responsible for any potential mistakes. The apparent riskiness of her idea terrified me and so, fearfully, I squashed it flat.
She wanted to give everyone visiting the website one day of free and unrestricted access to her subscription members area. No forms to fill out, credit card information to exchange or promises to keep. Just give it all away to anyone who wandered by for 24hrs.
It seemed crazy for a number of reasons.
- A deluge of new visitors might offset any additional sales by pushing our, already significant, bandwidth bills into the troposphere.
- Potential subscribers might use their free membership to download everything they wanted to see at once, delaying them joining the site for weeks, and perhaps forever.
- From that point on, a portion of subscribers might choose to wait for another free offer, even if none was promised, rather than ‘risk’ paying for a subscription.
My reasoning was sound enough to convince her she was wrong. Despite giving things away being the second oldest marketing technique known to man, I didn’t see how it could work on such a scale. I knew I could use samples to drive interest, but this wasn’t a sample, this was the very thing I was trying to sell, in whole, for 24hrs. It was too ripe for exploitation to seem sane.
(NB: The oldest marketing technique known to man is advertising, an off-shoot of the oldest profession, whose foremost exponents never give anything away).
Now I know why I was wrong, and think what I’ve learned working that out is worth sharing. The timing couldn’t be better. Information that used to be sold in books is now being published online without charge, and the ‘market of free’ is exploding. The only way many people think to get paid for their efforts is via advertising - I disagree (and did so publicly).
As new ways to pay for things emerge, the ability to give things away profitably will become increasingly important. The market will be split into those who can give things away profitably, and those who don’t know how and decide to stop sharing altogether.
If you have anything to sell this is a short series of posts about giving it away for free, so well, that you wind up rich.
You know, even those “$4.95 for three days” previews can be potentionally devastating over the long term, I’d wager. I’ve done it a few times, and what do I do? I loot the place - all you need is a high speed connection and enough hard drive space to hold your booty (there’s a pun in there somewhere). A free 24 hours? Yipe. I can see, though, the benefits of such a thing, but with all the porn out there (some of it you don’t even have to pay for!), it’s far easier to be taken advantage of by doing that.
Chris - check out the rest of the posts and let me know if you still disagree. What you do requires some organization, time and will. A lot of people don’t have that. Also, with regularly updated content, you can never be complete. Finally, people who want to do that will probably have done it already - or sought out a .torrent of the site’s archive. I really don’t think there’s much (or any) downside (but then again - I’m a crazy radical).
I think Sam’s right.
Cheers Tony. I think I’m right too…
Haha, I think you’re right as well. See, I’m anal (ha! pun!) when it comes (ha! no pun!) to my porn, so when I’ve done that trial looting, the site being looted was researched. New sites, without a lot of content, don’t really have to worry about that kind of thing… but older sites, with years of content, are easily subject to it. For newer sites, I’d say that giving away 24 free hours (for example) would be a great way to build buzz and gain early memberships, especially if the content is not only well-done, but provides something/someone(s) that other sites don’t.
*saunters off to read part 3*
Chris the thing to factor is, does it make more sense to prevent minority exploitation or delight the honest majority? Online, where bits are free, the exploiters will always have the advantage. Penalizing the honest customer to thwart them is cutting off your nose to spite your face IMHO. I hope in the next couple of installments I can make the idea I’m proposing clearer still.