If you have the quality content or software that people need, they’ll pay for it. Just get it in front of an influencer who’s opinion is respected, impress them, and then let them talk about it. I call it “the Oprah effect”.

It seems often with software that people make things free so that you become their beta tester. The application takes on the needs of the community and then when it’s really good, they start charging for it.

Here’s the thing though–if it’s free and it still sucks because you don’t have the money or the time to invest to make it better, what was the point to either me or you?

I’ve signed up for so many half-finished apps and wasted so much time because an app was built on a good idea but didn’t actually accomplish what I wanted. If selling a money-back guaranteed app means you’ll have enough money to actually code something worthwhile, sure, I’ll spend the two minutes to sign up via PayPal.

I’m just tired of being a beta tester, frankly. It’s half the reason I don’t really read TechCrunch anymore, because they’d rather break news about new apps vs. actually point out good ones.

In fact, I’d argue that the more “free” stuff exists — that isn’t high quality — the more valuable non-free becomes. It’s at least one way to cut through the garbage, and if the non-free is still garbage (which happens a lot!) at least there’s someone accountable.

Accountable means you can quit, you can report a bug, or whatever that medium requires.

Of course really quality free stuff does hurt. Quality free software cuts into commercial software, and quality blogs or news sites can certainly cut into for-money sites.

Free isn’t enough to win, exactly because there’s so much of it.

@Michelle — I agree with your main point. I’m curious about your thoughts on this idea:

Since “getting popular” is hard whether or not it’s free, why be free? If the only way to true, sustainable success is high quality, and quality is worth paying for, why not charge right out of the gate?

Might it be sustainable to just charge for a blog/newsletter right off the bat?

Certainly in the financial sector this happens all the time. There are newsletters that are $500/year and 100,000 subscribers. Could that — or some less extreme version of that — work elsewhere?

If so, how? And what are some requirements for that to work?

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it shows a desire for attention . . . so . . . did you get the attention you wanted?

do you feel better?

how about this . . . read what your peers write and don’t just argue for the sake of contention.

be respectful.

you may not get so many replies, but you will certainly earn more respect in the long run.

you love to unleash those attack dogs early, don’t you?

honestly, you sound more rash that well thought out.

Part of the purpose for the inflammatory tone is to incite someone to prove me wrong. I see tons of freemium software companies go under. It’s not the cure-all, particularly if you accommodate a niche that is more than willing to pay for your software.

I just don’t understand the point of the argument.

Yelling SHUT UP at 3 of the luminaries of the web is a nice tactic, but merely that a tactic. And dropping the stealth f-bomb is a nice touch to.

I don’t think I’d be given any slack for your inflammatory tone, but I do applaud it.

@jmacofearth

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I’m not as convinced about Mr. Gladwell’s smarts as Mr. Godin is, but I’m pretty convinced that Mr. Godin is smart so by logical extension… I’ve totally confused myself.

My whole problem with the issue is that I don’t think Chris Anderson has said anything particularly revolutionary or even interesting. Television and radio have been pretty much free for a while now. Of course there are paid alternatives but the penetration is pretty low until valuable content (Sopranos, Howard Stern) drives it up a bit.

I don’t buy 3D as the savior of movies. Movies will be saved by great content in a value-for-money environment. It’s that simple.

Journalists are whiny babies. They want their product (“News”) to be worth more and they cry when the free market demonstrates its true value. They are paying the price now for spending too much money chasing Diana/Paris/Monica and pretending that it’s news. Even the New Yorker (which I love) has to understand that it’s a minority interest fanzine with an inflated cover price plus sales tax. Mr. Gladwell seems so off the pace with his near-rant that it calls into question everything he has published to date. You could even say that his disingenuous rejection of Free published for free on the New Yorker’s site make him an out and outliar. Geddit?

I don’t know why

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Chris Anderson came to Austin at SxSW and basically made everyone feel stupid, or put some of them to sleep. He wouldn’t even let the audience or the panel discuss free as in libre and not free as in beer, which honestly is more interesting to me anyway. Maybe he ate a bad taco or something and was just in a bad mood.

The audience was perplexed as to how to get value out of his second panel. Anderson at one point chided one questioner like he was a little kid. In his defense, it was a silly question, but Anderson’s reaction was quite unnecessary and set the tone of the entire panel as adversarial.

Honestly, it was a big disappointment. I loved the longtail and felt it really opened my eyes to a lot of things. At SxSW, I felt Anderson was there to pitch his book first and provide value second.

Will “Free!” have the same tone as Anderson’s SxSW panels? Because if so, it’s not worth the time it takes to read.

I basically included you in the conversation because Malcolm Gladwell brought up some good points. I buy Gladwell books because they are insightful, and as long as they stay that way, he doesn’t have to do anything for free. Sometimes being mysterious and unaccessible makes you more desirable to people, and they’ll pay more for a piece of you. Free doesn’t address that. His approach is different from yours, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. So maybe “Shut Up” was just a reaction to “Malcolm is wrong”, because I think Malcolm Gladwell is awfully smart.

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