what to think?

I just noticed that the splendid people at psfk have linked to one of my posts on their IF thingy. So I clicked on the trackback doodah to go and see what they'd written about it and found that I couldn't do it without a subscription.

Which made me feel kinda hmmm.

I'm not sure why exactly. I guess it's that I can't see what they've written about something I wrote without paying them some money. Is that very petty? Of course, I based my thing on a Guardian article (though I did a bit of extra research and thinking) and I used a picture from there so maybe I'm doing exactly the same thing, but then I'm not making any money out of this, and they can see what I've done for free.

I was thinking of subscribing to IF, but now I'm slightly less inclined.

Am I just being an arse?

Comments

[Henry Lambert]

I can understand where you're coming from Russell, it does seem a little weird and I agree that you shouldn't have to pay to see something that you wrote.

However, I think that the guys at IF should slightly change the way they provide information. All the usual news should be on PSFK but when they put in the hard work of interviewing, providing analysis and doing field work we should be prepared to pay. Basically I think they just need to define more clearly the differences between PSFK and IF (while keeping up the good work on both).

[ritter Vonali]

blogs (knowledge) should always be free. but if they need to charge they should do it by post. you may not be able to justify $20 per month since you may not find every post interesting, but you can certainly justify 10-20 cents per post that you want to read.

[Piers Fawkes]

Russell,

Thanks for your post and thanks for bringing this to our attention. OK, this is the current thinking - for IF you pay for 2 things:
a) original content on marketing ideas
b) finding of published great marketing ideas through editorial selection

Both take time. I blog full time now, and any commenter who thinks that EVERY blog should be free is naive.

Maybe I shouldn't have Trackbacked..hmmm.. - I appreciate this discussion and any further comments.

btw: this is the post:

The One Stop Thali Cafe in Bristol has been selling Mumbai tiffin carriers to their regular customers at £20 each so they can get takeaways from the restaurant.

Included in the price is your first meal and they've sold about 1,500 in the last 18 months. Commenting on this, ad planner, Russell Davis says: "This is genius. In one fell swoop they've: created genuine differentation for the business; done something environmentally responsible; made a little bit of extra money; tied their customers a little closer to their business; won themselves some interesting PR; actually improved their service (tiffin carriers keep the food hotter for longer)"

And then there are links to this site.

[russell]

thanks Piers,

It's tricky isn't it?

I agree with you, good blogging is worth money. I'll probably end up paying you at some point.

And the trackback thing is strange too, because maybe ignorance (on my part) would have been bliss.

But then without this post I wouldn't have known that you'd spelt my name wrong.

I have no good answer, and I'm not saying I'd have done any different, I'm just pointing out how it feels to me. Even if my feeling has no logic.

[Christian]

Good blogging is worth paying for, take ad-rag : I'l happy to pay 2 euro/month to have access to their huge database. And I sort of enjoy giving money to people i appreciate (like dabitch or cafeinegodddess).
So the question is : How much do you want ? :-)

[Christian]

Good blogging is worth paying for, take ad-rag : I'm happy to pay 2 euro/month to have access to their huge database. And I sort of enjoy giving money to people i appreciate (like dabitch or cafeinegodddess) even if i don't know them.
So the question is : How much do you want ? :-)

[Piers Fawkes]

Well, I must apologise on the spelling of your name Russell. All I can say, is that we monitor interesting marketing sites and when they write something really great we point to it.

I have always maintained that IF is a bit of an experiment but we're getting subscribers and maybe it will help define a new model in blogging.