Why I don’t pay for Content
And why it could be the way to go for you
I wrote about the resurgence of personal blogs and newsletters. I analyzed the Stratechery business model and concluded very healthy profits. Surely I’m one of the first subscriber to paid newsletters in my areas of interest (economics, technology, entrepreneurship, product management, etc.)?
No.
Before you call me cheap (I am), let me explain.
Content on the internet can be allocated on a spectrum. 1 is not worth reading (e.g. SEO spam), while 10 is an absolute outlier in terms of quality and insight.
Most content on the web is much closer to 1 than to 10.
Now we enter paid content. The average quality is much higher. Almost no subpar articles, paired with the occasional superstar.
Looking at this it seems a no-brainer to invest money in paid content.
Crucially, these points on a spectrum don’t exist in a vacuum. I follow lots of free Twitter accounts and blogs. With lots of good to perfect content in it. My personal content spectrum looks different.
I have a message for you: the amount of high-quality content in the world is just staggering. [Nicolas Colin]
Every one of us has built its own mechanism to filter and sort what to consume. Call it filter bubble if you want. How does one article end in my Read it later-list and the other doesn’t? Sometimes its peer recommendation, sometimes skimming, sometimes a clickbait headline, sometimes I don’t really know myself. Filtering (or curating) is a craft, refined over years if not decades.
Maybe because I started my internet consumption when paywalls weren’t established, filtering out the content worthy of consumption feels like second nature to me. Sometimes, a clickbait headline is just that: clickbait. The filter mechanism isn’t perfect, but it gets a little bit better every day.
The end result is a spectrum with more variety and a lower average score than going the paid way.
But — and this is important — the chances of getting the most superstar articles is the highest. Because the pool of free content is so much bigger, it hosts a lot more 10’s. (On the other side, a 10 behind a paywall makes it into free territory via screenshots and quotes more often than not.)
After all, I’m not looking to increase my average score by a percentile, I’m looking for mind-changing impact.
Reading needs attention. Attention is a zero-sum game. Meaning, the moment you buy paid content and don’t want it go to waste, your attention minutes available get reduced.
That’s a problem in case your available attention is overbooked already. Why should I pay for even more content when the chances of reading a 10 is higher tapping into my Pocket list?
Would I pay if I could reliably get only the 10s? Heck yes, this would save so much time. But given that I would have to train a personal assistant to filter articles just as I do, it seems impossible. And because it seems impossible, maybe I wouldn’t trust the results to really be the “best”. (Sounds like a control issue.)
I do grant paywall publishers their success. But be aware, wealth distribution will follow the power law. We’ll see some shiny poster childs rather than an income replacement for all the journalists in this world.
There’s too much pricing pressure from those that create content for free (Venture Capitalists for deal flow, individuals for careers, experts for status etc.).
In certain slices of the new knowledge economy, particularly in financial analysis or in business strategy, you can get a mediocre product for a price, but the very best products are free. Someone wrote it down and shared it; not for money, but for something else. You have to know who’s writing them, but it’s usually not that hard to find if you spend time on Twitter or other online communities. [Alex Danco]
It’s the same economics as elsewhere: Only a handful of people get successful for example in being an actress/actor — a lot more try.
Perhaps the next generation of writers will figure out a business model that is better aligned with the unlimited reach of the web.
Having explained all that, my process has its shortcomings:
- In absence of a TikTok for text, one needs time to form a follow graph of good content authors. Even more time to read all their outputs and filter them to your liking. I invest that time happily because I couldn’t live with myself believing one of those rare 10's slipped through my fingers. You maybe don’t have that issue.
- By reading only a handful of newsletters the context switching required goes down. When Benedict Evans starts about App Stores I know more or less what to expect. My worldview doesn’t get challenged as much. You may find comfort in that.
- There’s a satisfaction in being done with all content, arriving at Inbox Zero. That’s not possible once you embrace the abundance of the whole web.
If you haven’t put in the work already to form a social graph and design a curating process that works for you, I guess you’re really better off paying for content. But for me personally, doing the work is worth it.
