Or pay $10/month.
Or pay $12.50/month
Information Wants To Be Free. So do cattle.
That's why Joseph Glidden's invention of barbed wire transformed the west. It made fencing cattle less expensive than having the cattle stolen, er, uh, rustled, er, uh, liberated and eaten.
Barbed wire was an immediate success.
1874 there was 10,000 lb made and sold.
1875 there was 600,000 lb made and sold.
1876 there was 2,840,000 lb made and sold.
1877 there was 12,863,000 lb made and sold.
1878 there was 26,655,000 lb made and sold.
1879 there was 50,337,000 lb made and sold.
1880 there was 80,500,000 lb made and sold.
1881 there was 120,000,000 lb made and sold.
1882 there was 180,000,000 lb made and sold.
With barbed wire, you could fence in your land for less than 3c per running foot. With cattle selling for $10 and more apiece, barbed wire didn't take long to pay for itself.
Cattle rustlers didn't care much for barbed wire - and they weren't the only ones. Even today, every farm boy can tell you of terrible accidents where someone was terribly injured by falling into the savage stuff - and many of them bear scars from minor accidents like that.
One of the reasons Digital Rights Management (SRM) has been so unpopular among users has been the fact that it keeps buyers from enjoying the music that they've purchased. They can listen on the iPod, but not on the computer, in the living room, or in the car. Upgrade the operating system on your Mac, connect your iPod, and the iPod thinks the music is stolen, and deletes hundreds of songs, purchased at $1 apiece.
It's like falling into a barbed wire fence.
Recent changes in the law have made music on internet radio uneconomic. A radio station that broadcasts over the air pays much lower royalty rates than the same station broadcasting over the internet.
At the same time, television networks are discovering that when they make shows available online, their broadcast audience does not shrink, but it grows. Like a car dealer offering test drives, like an ice cream shop giving free tastes, like a heroin dealer giving you your first hit for free, sampling is a powerfully effective sales tool.
It seems like the folks setting up royalty fees for internet radio are shooting themselves in the foot, treating internet radio as a consumer to be milked, rather than a promotional tool to be exploited.
What does this all mean to you? Information is valuable - and it can be used successfully to promote your product or service.
That's true even if your product is information.
In the old days, audiences were drawn back to the movie house, week after week, by the use of cliffhangers. Today's television serials rarely end an episode by having Nell roped to the railroad tracks by Snidely Whiplash, but good screenwriters always leave you wanting more.
That leaves us with three rules:
Adding information is easy if you have a content management system - but that's what AmishHosting is for. Our business is all about making YOUR website more successful.
