Anderson believes that speakers are
increasingly entrepreneurs.
What
Can You
Make
Free?
Chris Anderson’s book lists 50 business models built on one of the
principles of free, categorized into
three general groups. While not every
example will be adaptable to every
kind of professional speaker, they collectively serve to illustrate Anderson’s
4th Rule of Free: “You can make
money from Free. Free opens doors,
reaching new customers. It doesn’t
mean you can’t charge some of them.”
Interestingly enough, Anderson essentially used to speak for free—
donating;any;fees;to;charity—until;his;wife;questioned;how;she;benefited
from him being on the road all the time for no tangible income.
“Currently, I do lots of different kinds of public speaking, because I
wear a lot of hats, and some are free and some are for pay,” he says. “I
do speeches as the editor of Wired, as the author of my books, talking to
clients, talking to schools. I tend to speak in person, maybe three times a
week, but there’s an occasional videoconference thrown in.” As an object
lesson in cross marketing, Anderson uses his speaking as an example—
and delivers a soft-sell plug—several times throughout Free.
In addition to the editing, writing and speaking facets of his business,
Anderson has an active entrepreneurial streak. In addition to founding a
company that makes unmanned aerial drones and robotics, he’s the founder
and non-executive chairman of Book Tour (part owned by Amazon), which
focuses on authors speaking in support of their books, typically for free.
Determine Your Business Model
Anderson’s own experiences reinforce his opinion that speakers are
increasingly entrepreneurs. “It’s a small business, so you need a business
model,” he says. “Those models typically include free in one way or
another, but each enterprise might handle it differently. You’ve got to think
like an entrepreneur and innovate, come up with something that’s just
right for you, your audience, your subject and your market. You need to
start experimenting to build on successes, knock down failures, and change
things up. That’s how things work online these days.”
Because every speaker, subject, audience and idea is different, as is
the role that speaking plays in each business, there are no hard-and-fast
rules. Indeed, Anderson has seen a proliferation of models built around
speaking in recent years. Nonetheless, Anderson believes strongly about
what core aspects of free work best for him. “Some authors maintain very
vibrant online presences—blogging and Tweeting, etc., and give away a
lot to promote their ideas and to some extent themselves,” he says. “I’m
among them.” White papers and columns, online or in print, are other
examples of “freemiums” that can work whether your primary business is
speaking or consulting.
Ultimately, marketing with free content comes down to weighing two
factors: “The digital costs are near-zero marginal costs, so you don’t worry
too much about the cost of the free versions,” he says. “What you do have to
worry about is the opportunity cost, which is to say the extent to which the
free form decreases what you make from the pay form.”
The celebrity, recognition and awareness resulting from the free form can
be converted into money in several ways, including selling books, speeches
and consulting gigs. “Giving content away allows people to participate and
think about how your ideas might apply to their own business,” he says.
“Free is best at maximizing your audience and awareness. For some of
them,;that;initial;information;may;be;sufficient,;and;they’ll;say,;‘That’s;all;I
