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Originally Posted by ratinox
I think you're making the same mistake that some traditional publishers (including RIAA and MPAA) keep making. The best way to make a profit from digital content isn't by selling digital content. It's by selling everything else around it.
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If however you are, lets say, a book publisher/author/programmer the digital content is what you are trying to sell, there isn't anything around it, with a few notable exceptions the merchandising is non-existent, the best selling book on Amazon UK right now is by Katerina Diamond, Never heard of her BTW
, but I'm pretty sure the number of people wanting a T-Shirt is close to zero.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratinox
My go-to example is web comics. Web comic artists give away what traditional publishers would consider to be their products. Instead, web comic artists make their incomes from merchandise related to their comics and, more recently, on-site advertising and, more recently still, crowd-funding services like Patreon.
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Then they are selling merchandise not comics, and the comics are advertising.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratinox
My second example is Netflix. They clearly don't sell content. They sell delivery of content, originally DVD rentals and now mostly streaming content over the Internet. That is to say, they sell convenience.
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Subscription service, renting not selling. And they are selling access to the content not convenience (Watch sales tank if they stop adding new content).
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratinox
My third example is Baen Books. Baen, through the Baen Free Library and the Baen CDs, operates a hybrid model: give some content away with few restrictions and encouragement to redistribute, and traditionally sell the rest.
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Samplers & Freebies, essentially promotional content to convince you to buy their digital content. Also the CD's have now stopped as more people have switched over to digital from paper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratinox
So yes, you can make a profit by giving content away, but it requires a different view of what content is in order to do it.
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It doesn't, when your
only product is the content you can't give it away.