German. 2 Meanings.
The best thing you can do in life is sell something digital. There is so little drudgery involved you can focus on making a difference in people's lives. Then they recommend you to their friends. Then you can get paid. You can change your life making what you love. What is there not to like?
But if you use the most common internet ways to just post your creations somewhere, you're screwed. The platform providers with their engineer culture have a hard time understanding that pictures, words, sounds or video are worth something. So they only offer you ways to share it for free. They just can't imagine you getting paid. And if you do, it's certainly a flat rate that needs to be split among who knows how many creators.
But people are slowly discovering that this leads to a race to the bottom in terms of quality. Screenwriters write rushed scripts, musicians make funny little reality shows, and writers make a lot of selfies and infographics. And many use the very latest technology to make weird jumbles out But it would appear that very few feel they can take the time- and love- to really polish something to make it great. And if they do, it seems like they ought to be rewarded much more.
There is a very simple, glaringly obvious solution to this.
Consider for a moment that it's not technology or people or power that run the world. Those follow. The world is run by ideas.
Now take a moment to consider a bold idea. The idea is: The things you create are worth something.
If all the tools you use, the people you talk to, the methods you work with, if they all are based on the idea that your creations are worth nothing, then it will be very hard to make sales. Your creations will be presented in a way that make them seem a dime a dozen, and people will call them "content", and consider it a generic mass of stuff to fill empty containers with. And because there is nothing of substance inside, no amount of it will ever be satisfying, and the mills of emptiness will roll on.
But if you can convince yourself that your words, pictures, movies and recordings are worth something- and you will work with people who believe so to, like us, your friends at inhalt.io for example- then everything you make will be presented like a valuable, precious amazing thing. And guess what- you will be able charge for them, and have enough time to create well, and make a living creating the things of your dreams.
Sure, you still need to find people who enjoy what you do, and strike a balance between their needs and yours as a creator, and agree on a price. But at least the odds will be stacked in your favor, and if you put in effort, you can conceivably be rewarded.
There are at least some sales sites who understand that content is worth something. But most of those still impose severe limits on you. They are still full of the old thinking- the industry says how it works and it's the industry's way or the highway. Well, it ain't like that no more. We think the very least we can do is let you set your own prices. But this is not a world where the horrible pain of pure boredom drives people with no alternative to take a precious off-day to drive into town, walk into a store and then buy whatever is there because there isn't anything else. No, this is internet time. Things have to be convenient, and you have about five seconds to get people's attention. This is why we built a yes-ladder- tiny baby steps to tease and connect with people. It's built on giving away small amounts of the cheapest thing you have, streams or views. Just arrived on your site? You can have five streams. Want more? Okay, your email address is another five streams. Want to show it to a friend? Great! You and them get more streams! Want a little more? Okay at least register your credit card to make sure it's
set prices for you- a song on Amazon Music is 99 cents. This is better than free, but why does Amazon think they know your audience better than you do? Couldn't you have an exclusive song you only sell to 500 dedicated fans for $100? Maybe you want to sell a particular song for 5 cents help users over the hump of leaving credit card information? Maybe you want to give away a few free streams to get an email address? This is all not possible with traditional stores simply because no one has thought very much beyond bringing CD selling business online.