Posts Tagged ‘Open & Free Business Model’
Make Your Content Free – The Money Will Follow
This has been the topic of discussion for a very long time, the argument of making people pay for content over giving it away. The landscape is changing rapidly, the world is and will not tolerate being forced to buy content whether it be music, files or the written word, you can’t enforce control when you need trust! It used to be that he who had control made the money, today, the good news is, that is changing, he who has less control makes more money. The bottom-line is the bottom-line, we will always try to monetize anything and everything. It seems we are very short-sighted though, we are still trying to make people do things they don’t want to do. Trying to control what people can access is not the way to go about building trust, in fact, it puts the guard up and raises questions as to motive.
One of the bigger challenges I see with making money online is, it’s not seamless enough yet, people still have to jump through far too many hoops. You would think with all the advancement in technology this would have been solved long ago. As mobile technology improves, the more and more we become mobile, the more transactions and advertising will be come seamless, it has to because we won’t tolerate what is cumbersome. Mobile advertising is where you should be developing your content, convert your free content into an app for iPad, iTunes or mobile phones and what have you. Advertising (At-vertising) is now Appvertising. The world will almost be 100% mobile in the next 5 – 7 years, focus your distribution through Appvertising. Feed your Blog content through an app, distribution is not the problem anymore, the Internet solved that for us years ago.
The easier you make it for your audience to come in, the greater return on your investment. Attention is the new currency, and in that currency there is an underlying trust osmosis component. The equation of tomorrow is:
EXPOSURE -> DISCOVERY -> COMMUNITY -> REVENUE
We are moving from selling products & services, to selling our attention, Google is doing it all the time.
The power of the future is in sharing, sharing music, sharing content, and sharing means doing it freely, not being forced to pay for that sharing. The problem is we are in the midst of a copyright gridlock (coined by Gerd Leonhard), there is much to be figured out here. Making the money happens around all that sharing, your primary content is distributed freely, this paradigm shift of Free & Open will change behaviour. The revenue change will come after the behaviour, habit & culture changes first.
Being connected scares companies and business owners, because we are going through a fundamental shift, from Closed to Open. The fear of loss is far greater than the desire for gain in this shift. It means not controlling how the money is made, the open & free marketplace means you & I are in control, we get to decide, big business doesn’t want that. So think of ideas that will allow you to maximize the Open & Free Business Model, that will allow you to attract the right kind of attention.
We have to change our beliefs in how the world really is. Today only 25.6% of the world is here online, what will the world look like in the next 3 – 5 years when that number is over 60%? What would 5 Billion people online change in your online presence and brand? Think about that for just a moment, should you be doing things differently?
We have a Global Trust Crisis, Copyright Gridlock where the value of money needs to be re-determined, and there is so much to unlearn, but that’s what makes all this fun, the future is perfect because we haven’t screwed it up yet!
Give your audience access first before paying, Collaborate instead of Dominate, Coordinate & Cultivate instead of Command & Control, Control is Dead. We are becoming a broadband culture, we click to get before we ever pay. Access first, pay later.
I would love to hear your thoughts, my goal is to make you think, nothing more nothing less.
What do you think?
The Open & Free Business Model Mini Workshop
I have been asked many times what the Open & Free Business Model is and what it might look like, how would do I use it in my business and so on. The questions always center around, how will I get paid for my digital content? That’s actually the wrong question and the wrong focus. The model is not about technology, nor is it a skill set, it’s a mind set, a paradigm shift of moving away from control. It used to be, he who had control made all the money. Today, the good news is, that thinking or model is shrinking and is changing to, he who has less control makes more money. It sounds risky doesn’t it? I liken it to a faith based way of doing business, trusting the people formerly know as consumers.
With that in mind, Owen Greaves Consulting is holding a workshop for local businesses Friday April 30th from Noon – 4PM, there will only be 20 seats available and is being held in my community. This workshop is a scaled down version of the Two Day Program. Three topics will be covered, first I’ll touch on trends to help get the creative juices flowing, then I’ll give you 4 – 5 examples of brands / businesses that do variations of the Open & Free Business Model, then we’ll spend most of the workshop in a breakout session, call it a Think-Tank if you will. We’ll split up into teams of 5 to work together on developing idea’s, concept’s that can be implemented, and then each team will share their idea’s with everyone. In the longer Two Day Workshop, the format is similar but with perks not included in the shorter session.
The purpose of the workshop’s is to help you as a business owner to begin the process of changing the way you view the world online, revolution is adopting new behaviour, it is my hope you will change your behaviour and become revolutionary through these workshops.
I have shared many times before, there are 1.7 Billion people online today, in the next 3 – 5 years that number will be 5 Billion. We will have to prove Impact like never before, we will need to find new creative and effective ways to get attention. The current strategies and or tactics have yet to be proven effective in this new way of thinking, also the current infrastructure is inadequate.
If you live in my area and would like to fill one of the 20 seats available, please contact ASAP! I will be providing more details later in the week, there will be a 10% discount for registering by April 23rd, 2010.
For more information, check this Blog and or send me an e-mail: owen@owengreaves.com
Free Seattle's Best Coffee at Subway
Like McDonald’s, Subway is following suit. Till April 22nd, 2010 you can get your Seattle’s Best coffee free at any Subway, this on the heals of the Golden Arches experiment that increased sales in the Month of March. This another low-level example of how the Open & Free Business Model works. In the retail sector they have a name for it, Loss Leaders. They would blow out product that hasn’t moved or strategically bring in a product of low cost and use it to draw in customers. This is not a new concept but strengthens the argument for the Open & Free Business Model to increase revenues.
I can’t help wondering what’s next, this is the kind of thing I teach and recommend to local businesses, how they can increase awareness, brand and revenues by strategically using what they may already have in house. As I’ve mentioned before, the Open & Free Business Model is not a skill set, it’s a paradigm shift, a new way of looking at the world of business, especially online but also win the brick & mortar types. I hold workshops to help business owners make progress on the deemed paradigm shift, so they can go back to the office and help staff make small changes. The world is coming, it’s not here yet, but when it does, you’ll want to be ahead of the wave. Otherwise, you may get wiped out by that wave.
The fear of loss is what most business owners go to bed with at the end of each business day. How will coveer this, how will I….and so on. The fear of losing their business or money of any amount is a problem. The Open & Free Business Model embraces that fear and confronts it, how, by doing something different and taking a small calculated risk. You most likely took that risk when you started your business.
McDonald’s obviously has resources most of us don’t have, Subway isn’t nearly as large but they see the benefit of giving away Seattle’s Best Coffee for the purposes of leveraging a Social Currency called ATTENTION. McDonald’s sales increased when they ran the experiment of giving away coffee for short period of time, the loss if any, was minimal and got them a ton of Attention. These arrangements are called Strategic Alignments or Alliances, Seattle’s Best wants to sell more coffee, offers to provide the coffee by leveraging Subways customer base. Who wins? They both do!
Even if you don’t own a business, your going to remember Subway’s name, and Seattle’s Best Coffee sales will go up. What a simple concept, but yet the fear of loss seems to win over most business owners. If you’re dealing with the fear right now, go to Subway and have a coffee on the house till April 22nd and get creative with how you can overcome that fear. Or, take my workshop and learn how to defeat the fear by learning the Open & Free Business Model Mindset.
Where To Put The Toll Booth
The question of where to put the Toll Booth is being asked of me more and more lately, it’s a big subject and really can’t be covered in a Blog Post well, I’ll just share some thoughts for you to ponder. With the shift to an Open & Free Business Model, the confusion of the concept, the fear of losing control, and how to make new money from it are the biggest reasons to take your time and consider where the Toll Booth should be. Let’s consider some facts.
Today we have 1.7 Billion people on the Internet, in the next 3 – 5 years there will be 5 Billion people here online. Also consider that Advertising dollars are shifting to the digital marketplace, traditional advertising is dropping and digital is increasing. Print is down 18.7%, T.V. is down 10.1%, Radio is down 11.7% and magazine’s are down 14.8% in the USA alone. On the other-hand, Digital is up, HandHelds are up 18.1% and general Internet (Computer) is up 9.2% overall in the USA. These numbers are changing everyday, and these are taken from November 2009 statistics. With over 65,000 iPhone Apps on the market and more are being released daily, these apps are revenue generators that play a huge role in the Open & Free Business Model. A Toll Booth if you will.
The term Open & Free Business Model means a great many things, it’s access first before money, in a way it’s like the old GPL of Shareware model, you got to try it for 30 days and then you had to buy it. But today there is a difference, today people won’t tolerate paying for content in any of the traditional terms. Newspapers are trying get you to pay for content for access, how do you think that will go, I think they will rethink that if they want to generate new revenues.
The biggest issue I’m coming across is a thing called creativity, there is a mental block on how Open & Free is going to make money. Personally I think it’s not that difficult to figure out, but that’s what I do, I help businesses come up with new ideas on how to do that, to build something that can be implemented for the purposes of being ready for the new 3.3 Billion people coming in the next few years. The problem isn’t that it can’t be done, the problem is we have to unlearn and make a paradigm shift in how we view the world of business. I’ve quoted Gerd Leonhard many times, he once said, “the Internet is a giant copy machine, we now have to sell things that can’t be copied. Sell things around the content. Sell the packaging, sell the experience.” I’ve always believed that the experience I have in dealing with you determines the success of your brand. Business is not transactions, it’s interactions with people, and those people determine whether your brand is good or not based on the experience of dealing with you and your business.
If we must stop the model of copy to something that can’t be copied, we must look at a bigger picture, and that means changing the way we see the world. The Open & Free Business Model has nothing to do with technology, it is rethinking the placement of the digital marketplace Toll Booth. Some Bloggers have proven this model in part, offering good if not great content for free that you normally would have paid for upfront. That scares the day lights out of the business world, letting you decide before you buy means mainstream business has give up some control. It means they can’t guide you through the typical sales process of making say yes to a string of mini closes. They have to change how they think and ensure what they want you to purchase brings value and fills a real perceived need. They struggle now with where they make the money and how to ask for it. I’m generalizing of course, some understand but most don’t.
The bigger issues coming, what happens when we go to a single currency in North America, what happens if Net Neutrality comes to fruition, there will be another shift but not nearly as big as the Open & Free Business Model. This is not the same as Open Source but we can learn much from the GPL (General Public License) model.
The placement of the Toll Booth will most likely determine the amount of money you generate in the digital marketplace, but you need to understand how to determine that placement. You may not like the idea of an Open & Free Business Model, but what you may not see is that free gets you to a place where can ask to be paid. It will be quality over quantity, and it will also mean you are solving a problem and or filling a perceived need.
I have probably introduced you to, maybe for the first time, the thought of giving your content away for free and then figuring out how to make new money from that thought. There is far too much to cover for this post but you can read more about it here on my Blog by doing a search on the topic.
Owen Greaves Consulting is currently planning a 2 day workshop on the Open & Free Business Model, to help you learn how and where to put the toll booth in your Open & Free Business Model. If you are interested in this workshop please send me an e-mail or leave a comment for more information.
The Ambiquity of Technology
I’m thinking out loud today and thought I would share those thoughts with you. It’s been said we know the future, and we know what it looks like, but do we really? Yes we can predict with some accuracy what might happen, we just can’t describe the details, what color and what shape. Most people keep their head to the grind stone, look up once and awhile but for the most part they work till the bell rings. There are a chosen few who can’t stand the grind stone and have their heads in the clouds. I’m one of those characters, I love looking at the future, I love seeing what has yet to come and I love to share what most can’t see. It’s not that visionaries are better or smarter, they just see the world differently.
It’s not too hard to see that technology is getting more and more advanced and much smaller, we all embrace the use of handheld devices. Computers…towers and laptop’s will be a thing of the past in the next 5 years or so. Some of you remember the 1st Cell Phone, it was HUGE, today it’s almost the size of a credit card. If Ray Kurzweil is correct in his predictions, we will become wireless devices by merging with technology. Imagine that! Soon the Internet will be readily available anywhere in the world, it won’t matter which device you use, you will have access.
Embracing ambiguity is the secret sauce, and I mean embracing ambiguity in most things online, not just technology. Technology is growing exponentially, therefore we can’t really predict it’s advancement with accuracy. We can however see where technology is going, the deliverables are another issue. Like most things in life we can deduce them to an equation but we really can’t tell you in great detail or when it actually delivers. Visionaries can see what’s coming and they work hard to help you understand it, they just aren’t clear on when you can have it.
Creativity is a function of ambiguity really, we start with an idea, a concept and work within that ambiguity until it takes shape. If you invested in that ambiguity, that would suggest you have huge faith that it will come to fruition. Afterall, you wouldn’t risk without some form of faith that thing you are creating will actually deliver. So why is it so hard for most people to function in ambiguity? It’s a thing called security, we want some kind of quarranttee we won’t lose anything, but will gain everything. Technology is one of those rare fields where that’s possible and we are willing to accept almost every technilogical invention we lay our hands on. For some reason, most are comfortable here in the technology sector, even though the risks are the same in any other catagory or profession.
My point, we can’t possibly know the outcome of any one thing. We must dream big, and with that means we will have to risk big and create within the ambiguity until we have a clearer idea of what’s really going on with our creation. If we always played it safe, do you think we would be where we are today? I doubt it.
So, no matter what you do, whatever profession you happen to be in, try to embrace ambiguity and make it your friend. It won’t be easy, if you have ever been poor or had more month than money, you know what it means to not know where or how you were going to make the ends meet. That kind of ambiguity can turn you inside out, if you’re in Ministry or are required to raise funds in order to pay your bills, you know what I’m talking about.
I share alot about the future of technology, and the new open & free business model, and I need smart people to make sure the predicted progress is done right. Not only do I embrace ambiguity, and not everyone can, it is however easier to embrace the ambiguity of technology.
Are you a risk taker, are you comfortable with ambiguity? Is it the mystery that draws you or is it the anticipation of something new and cool to use?