Morning Thoughts on Content and Adding Value — "$hit Should Be Free?"

In a comment I came across this morning, someone referenced now defunct content site TSU and a number of other sites where people have been rewarded for content.

And here we are on Steemit, "being rewarded for content."

Distant Mountains

Content Has Value...

The issue of whether web content has "value" (in the monetary sense) is a very old one; it actually goes back almost to the birth of the Internet.

There was always a very strong bias in the direction of "It should be FREE!" from day one, and many pundits of the time (late 1990s) were almost offended at the idea that the Internet would have "commercial" content.

As far as they were concerned, "all the information on the planet" should just be on the Internet, and as free as going to the library.

Which — incidentally — is funded by your taxes.

So it's not actually free.

But that's beside the point. Or, at least, it's an "inconvenient truth."

Content Has NO Value...

Of course, the Internet soon enough became commercialized, and with that... a funny thing happened.

The people insisting that "content has NO value" were basically those who stood to gain from taking "FREE" content and making money from it, via various forms of monetization from paywalls to advertising.

The root argument was, naturally that running a server farm to keep "free" content flowing actually cost money, and you had to pay some techs to oversee the stuff, at least.

Meanwhile, the actual creators of this money-generating content were pretty much left out in the cold.

If I had $5 for every time I was told "Well, we can't actually PAY contributors at the moment, but this will look really good on your resumé!" I would actually be pretty well compensated.

The Beauty of Fall..."

Not Just a "Web Problem..."

Of course, we tend to get a little myopic and focused on our own stuff, when it comes to creating content online.

Creative Content — from art, to graphic design, to brilliant ideas, to thought-provoking articles — has really never been valued.

Take something like the graphic design field where — LONG before the Internet — designers were expected to "spec" the art for a large project for a new client, and upon presenting hundreds of hours of effort they would be told "Sorry, we picked someone else," or "Sorry, we changed the scope of the project," after which they would still use the submitted "free" art for something.

Meanwhile, the designer is eating cat food for dinner.

Human culture has a remarkable tendency to only place "value" on tangibles, even if it doesn't necessarily make sense.

"I will give you a dollar for each brick, but the INFORMATION you have that will allow me to make my own bricks for ten cents each should be FREE!"

People take... in not so many words... this approach, ALL the time.

Mountain sunset

But Does "Garbage" Have Value?

Let's fast-forward, for a moment, to the microcosm known as Steemit where people are contributing this largely intangible content, ostensibly in exchange for "something." We're trying to create a paradigm in which creativity does have value.

And then a different subset of Humanity bubbles to the surface, and we're faced with a new question; a new angle from which to examine value.

One of the few long-term content sites that keeps paying contributors is HubPages.

In a nutshell, the reason they are still around is that the "value" they bring to the marketplace is that the content on their network of websites meets certain quality standards.

EVERYone is free publish, but only the good stuff gets seen and compensated. In turn, that results in it being a "trusted" site among advertisers and search engines.

Of course, there are loads and loads of voices whining and moaning about "how unfair" it is that they can't get their (utterly crappy) content seen and compensated.

To which I can only pose the return question: "Why do people seriously believe they are OWED compensation for contributing a stream of garbage to the world?"

How about YOU? What is your thought on the "value" of creative content — from art, to writing, to music, to poetry? Is a content system "broken," if it rewards based more on trickery and marketing skills than quality? Or is "playing the game" more important than what you actually BRING to the table? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 181020 9:16 PDT