One of the delights I’ve found with having the internet all these years – something I could NOT have imagined growing up in the late 1940s and ’50s – is the worldwide connections we all can have.
- Learning
- Laughing
- Helping – giving and receiving
- Seeing ideas we might never have considered if not for writers all around this small blue planet we all inhabit who write across so many platforms.
And so much of it is FREE.
Yeah, you know that word, and you know it’s one of my absolute favorite 4-letter “F” words … right?
And whether the content is found here on BizCatalyst 360o, LinkedIn, Medium, or any other platform, we have the chance to learn, to grow, to make ourselves even better than we were before.
Many times for free.
But even when I have to pay to read it, something I’m willing to do … sometimes.
So what’s my beef?
- The paid subscription requirement that is not quickly shown.
- The inability to read more than the top two or three paragraphs the first time we’ve even read one article on that platform or by that author/company before we have to subscribe to see it all.
- The tease of subscribing and then finding out there’s no free option. And even if there is … for some of us, it might come too late.
That happened again to me recently, and I have to admit, I didn’t see it coming. The article was right up my alley, so I wanted to read it. But because I couldn’t beyond the second paragraph without paying, I clicked off.
And since I had never read anything by the author before this, I had very little information to help me make the right decision. Yes, the topic really resonated, but two paragraphs don’t ensure that I’ll like the whole thing.
Now I do understand that publications of all sorts need money to exist. They have costs associated with publishing, even on the internet.
But my issue here is transparency.
- There are many subscription requests that come AFTER we’ve read several articles from the same author and/or publisher, and we’re notified each time we read one so we can decide up front what to do. We have time to decide if the content in those several articles is what we’re looking for.
- I understand that kind of thinking; I have actually paid for two and not paid for a couple of others. Of course, with a free subscription that many publications/authors do offer along with their paid ones, I can decide about it later … right?
- And the best part? I know WHY I am saying yes or no, and I appreciate being given time for that.
Is this something you’ve noticed … or am I the only one?
How did you decide what to do?
I value your thoughts!
Susan–
I get a few newsletters, and except for one, I’ve kept them all free. The “extras” don’t seem worth what I’m being asked to pay. The free versions, though, have tremendous value, so it’s a bit of a conundrum. Do I sign up for the “fee” site, so the author is being paid for their otherwise “free” site?
The larger question for me is something that Shawn Parrish wrote about in his weekly newsletter: the concept of life’s “surface area.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeffikler_brain-food-newsletter-activity-7152320967996837888-RgeB?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
I really struggle to keep my “surface area” manageable. There are so many newsletters, so many books, so many TEDTalks, and so many (fill in the blank) – yes, even 360° – that I can quickly feel overwhelmed. Benefitting from any of these sources calls for discipline because otherwise, they’re all like chirping baby robins in the nest. Which do I take care of first?