Free vs. Paid
In his blog post today, Seth Godin talked about the rapidly growing trend of consumers using only free information. His point is that more and more consumers of information want only free information and are refusing to pay for advice. As a consultant, I make my living giving paid advice. And, as Godin points out, I too get a lot of "I don't want to pay for your consulting rates, I want you to answer few of my questions FREE". Most likely this trend will only get worse - i.e. people really refusing to pay for information, knowledge, and expert advice.
Sooner or later, however, the quality of the free information will diminish significantly. Those of us who make their money providing expert advice will switch from providing free advice (in the form of e-books, short coffee breaks, and blog posts) and start looking for other ways to make money. Hence, the information we will provide freely will not have the same quality as the one we will give if paid. Simply put, we will spend less time researching and thinking about the information that ends up on the "free" category and spend most of our time on the one that generates revenue. You might get "free" information; you might even brag about how you tricked some high-paid consultant to give you free information, but the quality of that information, its relevance to your specific situation will be lower and somewhat irrelevant. Which will result in a lot of mistakes you will spend a lot more money and time to fix than if you would get one of us on board (read "pay us") from the very beginning.
When you ask for free information, remember the saying: "It's worth what you paid for it".
Posted by Terra3.0 at 6/9/2011 2:12 AM 
Categories: Entrepreneurship
Tags: consulting entrepreneurship
Categories: Entrepreneurship
Tags: consulting entrepreneurship
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