Open Source & Blogging: Power of Free Content to Empower or Enslave
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Publisher of:
Currently...UI/UX Development Consultant
http://FrontendMasters.com
This Talk
• Free ideology
• My path and mistakes
• Benefits and detriments of producing free content
• Sustainability of free
The Free Ideology
• Education should be free.
• Do free things for the community is a requirement.
• Release free software and tools is always the better choice.
Benefits of Free Ideology
• Viewed as altruistic.
• Gain influence & connections.
• Speaking engagements.
• Impact lots of people.
• Receive good job offers.
• Viewed as altruistic.
• Gain influence & connections.
• Speaking engagements.
• Impact lots of people.
• Receive good job offers.
Benefits of Free Ideology
Can’t do it for these reasons!
• I started web design regardless.
• To me, the web was awesome and important.
• I’ll figure it out...
Beginning My Career
Staring Line• No starting audience.
• Writing mostly just to remember things.
• Published research / things I’m interested in.
Workshops and Conferences
• Spoke at 40+ conferences
• Italy, Ireland, Israel
• Met a lot of amazing people
Things That Sucked
• Created a lot of work to maintain projects and articles.
• Didn’t want to bankroll my work with a big company.
• Had bills to pay...blogging was taking up tons of time.
Tangible Detriments
• Free is Expected (700+ emails to debug people’s code problems)
• Wallet is empty (I wanted to remain independent).
• No long-term sustainability.
Is Free Sustainable?
• Free products get sold, close down or weird things happen to them all the time.
• Turn data into targeted ad space.
• Or corporate sponsored.
Potential Rewards of Free
1. Page Views
2. Social Following
3. RSS & RSS-to-email Subscribers
4. Email Subscribers
5. Ad Revenue
6. Product Revenue (Books, etc)
7. New Job
2. Social Following
• Proof of thought leadership.
• Not everyone sees every tweet or Facebook post.
4. Email Newsletter Subscribers
• Personal communication (feels 1-to-1)
• Highly trackable and actionable
6. Product Revenue
• Highly sustainable
• Repeat customers“Stacking bricks”
• Value builds over time
7. New Job
• Usually a result of what you did for free.
• Usually awesome and more in-line with your interests.
1. Page Views
2. Social Following
3. RSS & RSS-to-email Subscribers
4. Email Subscribers
5. Ad Revenue
6. Product Revenue (Books, etc)
7. New Job
My Rewards
Succeeded at idealism.
http://marcgrabanski.com/articles/developing-value-stronger-than-money
Customers grow with you as you get better over time and release
more products.
http://www.noeltock.com/startup-snippets/the-long-game/