Free content online offers an opportunity for marketing yourself, your know-how and talent, more than any other marketing or advertising technique you may have learned about. Nothing beats the value of your own knowledge and skill, especially when you laid out in full for others to see, benefit and re-use. I am not discovering anything, as, at least in my view, this is the true spirit of the web, the one not dictated by my hopes and projections but the ones proven to be physiologically compatible with this new and vast ecosystem called the Internet.

Robin Good - Master New Media

In this light, my direct video comment goes to address those:

a) who think that limiting, even in small and apparently marginal ways the distribution and re-use potential of your content can be a means to a greater end.

b) who have difficulties understanding where to draw the fine line between what that should be given out for free and what you should be charging for.

For the first group, the minuscule story of Lee Lefever and my desire to publish his great new "Twitter in simple words" video, goes a long way to explain with a real-world example what the true consequences can be.

For the second, I think that what really counts, in situations like those of David Cohn, (see yesterday's post and his comment) is to understand clearly that the web allows you via your open and unrestricted sharing the authority, credibility and trust to sell yourself or your selected products and services to anyone.

Actually... the more value and unrestricted access you provide to highly valuable content, probably the very one you think we should pay for, the more you match the physiological spirit of the Web, increasing significantly your authority and value and allowing you, as a consequence, to sell your best know-how and skills at the price level you want.

It is when you try to leverage the distribution power of the web with your personal interests, forgetting to place first the interests and feelings of your own readers, that the whole castle crumbles down, and no amount of threats, screaming and naming of people can really take this blotch away.

Does this make any sense to you?

See also:

• Content Publishing Strategy: Free or Paid? What Is Better?
• Online Publishing Business Models: How Free And Paid Approaches Do Complement Each Other