Back in the old-days of the Internet, free was a very bad thing. It attracted the wrong crowd. So you never gave anything away for free…even a simple article. You charged for everything.
These days, that’s not the case. Especially with new media, where the entire point is to freely give people your content, tips and advice.
But over the past several months, I have noticed a new trend…a dark side that is beginning to emerge from all of this free information. And I know I’m not alone, because some of my friends have told me about it too.
What is this dark side?
Well, it seems people are starting to treat free content more and more as if it were paid content. That means if they don’t like what they are getting…even though it’s 100% free…they have an axe to grind.
This can take many different forms…from a person who gets upset that you don’t answer their email the same day (when they are neither a client or customer of yours and just want free advice)…to people who get upset if a page doesn’t load, a video doesn’t play or a form doesn’t work exactly as they want.
I even joke that if you gave away $100 bills online, there would still be people upset with it for one reason or another.
Maybe I’m old-school…but for me, when someone provides me something free and useful, I’m grateful. And I let them know. If it turns out that free thing isn’t so great, I think “oh well”, forget about it and move on.
But somewhere along the line, it seems the Internet world…in general…has begun developing a false sense of entitlement. Maybe it’s because of Google and YouTube and Facebook…where everything is always free, free, free.
Funny thing is, it doesn’t work that way in the brick and mortar world. The only thing free is the public library. And no one complains.
I’m curious to see what other’s have to say about this…if they’ve noticed this trend too. If you have, or haven’t, or have any thoughts you’d like to add, just use the comment form below.
I totally agree Dave. If it’s free I know I have no right to complain if I don’t like it.
It’s been my experience, that the people who tend to complain are the ones who have ZERO business sense. They don’t spend a few seconds to think through how a person or company makes their money, instead they seem to believe that somehow by just using your site or reading your content that you are making a profit off of them thus the sense of entitlement.
Dave, I agree. But I fear that we, as content providers/trainers/creatives, are the ones to blame. The more that we give away for free, the more people will expect it, to the point where all the free stuff is perceived as an entitlement, and it’s perceived as naiveté to actually pay for something. Maybe I’m not as advanced as Chris Anderson, but I’m not buying “The Long Tail” and the culture of free as a viable business model. I think it has to be nuanced with an understanding of factors of scale and a viable profit-generating model.
I’ll make two cases, one for and one against “free.” I am a graphic designer. At one point in the ’90s, a colleague confided to me that he had never purchased any typefaces — he was able to get by with pirated and free typefaces. Big mistake. First, non-professional free typefaces are (usually) inferior to professional fonts. Second, pirated and free fonts are notorious for holding viruses, and that same colleague’s computer got hosed shortly after our conversation. Finally, why would I withhold money from companies who are building beautiful typefaces for my designs? I especially like to purchase typefaces from little-known but extremely professional companies, and I seek out those vendors. Those typefaces help set my designs apart.
And here’s a “free” success story: I’m also a filmmaker/sound designer, and a company from Canada called me and asked if I wanted a full set of DVDs of sound effects for free. No catch. I said yes, liked the collection, and have now purchased several other audio and video collections from them. Great business model: hook me with a free collection and then I’m a customer for life.
But back to your point about entitlement and gratefulness: it’s a trait sorely lacking from many business transactions, on both sides. I have spoken with sales reps who have been so stressed-out that they forgot to thank me for my business. And many customers expect the moon…for the price of a cab drive to the airport. Everyone is concerned about the state of the economy, but that shouldn’t mean that decency and respect and care for each other is thrown out the window.
By the way, speaking of gratefulness and free stuff, thanks for posting (multiple times) on the HF-S10 camera. I have an old GL2, and the possibility of salvaging all my old glass/filters from that camera for use on the HF-S10 is making me excited, even though they won’t be HD-quality glass…
Thanks again!
This is good to know. I’ve been planning to dip my toe into the blogging/vlogging world for sometime and it’s good to have a heads up. I was just thinking to myself how gracious it is of you to have a free 7 day trial period of your training program and that I wouldn’t have expected you to answer any of my questions via email until I paid for the first month. Makes sense.
Dave, I have been in advertising for about 35 years and while free is good, sometimes charging is better. For instance, every retail furniture store advertises FREE FINANCING OR ZERO INTEREST FINANCING. Most intelligent consumers understand that whatever the cost of the financing, it is built into the price so in many cases a 4% annual finance rate will seem more remarkable than FREE.
On the other hand, when you know the cost of something, FREE can be good. Again, using retail furniture as an example, FREE DELIVERY (usually $50 to $200) and NO SALES TAX are strong incentives because people expect to pay them and know how much they are saving. The offers seem more real because they are.
One last example. In 1995 we advertised FREE Sunrooms for a luxury home builder. The response was amazing because people knew that the value of this offer was around $30,000, However when we ran the offer a second time, people had already taken the offer for granted as an entitlement and were looking for an extra discount.
Go figure.
Dave – I am also amazed at the ‘complainers’ I supply copies of schematic diagrams for free on my about-guitar-amps.com website. Just the other day I had an email from a guy who was VERY UNHAPPY that he had not been able to access a free schematic diagram he wanted ‘NOW’ as he hadn’t received his password, (which would have been sent by autoresponder). I found myself feeling as though I had failed in some way, then felt angry. I sent the guy a polite email and gave him the password he needed and moved on – eventually.
There are still a lot of people out there though, who DO appreciate the efforts of webmasters so we shouldn’t let the miserable, ungrateful few spoil our fun!
By the way Dave – thanks for a great blog : )
Actually this has always been common behaviour among site visitors and it comes back in very many cases to people with the same general traits – male (30-40), loners, fairly obsessive and often on the autistic spectrum.
They’re the same people who bombard you with questions about minutiae, spelling and grammar errors, and citation glitches. They also have the characteristic of usually NEVER becoming paying customers, because most often they don’t actually have any money to spend. Unfortunately they also take slight very easily so simply telling them to take a hike doesn’t work either.
If you’ve got one of these, my deepest sympathies, but they’re an unavoidable consequence of doing business on an open internet.