This presentation is a walkthrough of my career of releasing free content and software, as well as the death of my blog and how you can build sustainability mechanisms into the content you release for free.

1. Open Source & Blogging:
Power of Free Content
to Empower or Enslave

2. Who?
Marc Grabanski
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jQuery UI Datepicker
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MarcGrabanski.com
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LOTS of UI Dev

3. Currently...
UI/UX Development Consultant
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Publisher of:
http://FrontendMasters.com

4. This Talk
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Free ideology
My path and mistakes
Benefits and detriments of
producing free content
Sustainability of free

5. The Free Ideology
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Education should be free.
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Release free software and tools
is always the better choice.
Do free things for the
community is a requirement.

6. Equal Access

7. Benefits of
Free Ideology
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Viewed as altruistic.
Gain influence & connections.
Speaking engagements.
Impact lots of people.
Receive good job offers.

8. Benefits of
Free Ideology
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•
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Viewed as altruistic.
Gain influence & connections.
Speaking engagements.
Impact lots of people.
Receive good job offers.
Can’t do it for these reasons!

9. Getting Started
Making Free
Things

10. My Path

11. Passion-First
Career Choice

12. Web Career Wasn’t
Recommended
Dot-com crash.
No jobs!
Everyone said “stay
away” from the web.

13. Beginning My
Career
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I started web design regardless.
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I’ll figure it out...
To me, the web was awesome and
important.

14. Against Economics,
Towards Passion
“Be a Java developer, you’ll make
way more money.”

15. Web UI is what’s
most important
...IMO

16. Passion-First
Writing

17. Open Source &
Blogging...Why?

18. Getting Started
Blogging

19. Staring Line
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No starting audience.
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Published research / things
I’m interested in.
Writing mostly just to
remember things.

20. Passion is Your
Fuel for Free

21. Blogging

22. People Notice
Passion-First
Writing

23. Growth

24. Passion-First
Coding

25. jQuery UI Datepicker
Used by a few ’06-07
Used by everyone ’08-13

26. Workshops and
Conferences
• Spoke at 40+ conferences
• Italy, Ireland, Israel
• Met a lot of amazing people

27. All for Free

28. Benefits of Free
• Trust and Influence
• Connections
• Opportunities

29. Personal Tour of
Jerusalem

30. But is Free Holy?

31. I Killed My Blog

32. Could Have Been
Avoided!

33. Things That Sucked
lot of work
• Created a projects and to
maintain
articles.
want
• Didn’twith ato bankroll my
work
big company.
• Had bills to pay...blogging was
taking up tons of time.

34. Tangible
Detriments
Expected (700+ emails to
• Free ispeople’s code problems)
debug
• Wallet is empty (I wanted to
remain independent).
• No long-term sustainability.

35. Is Free
Sustainable?
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Free products get sold, close
down or weird things happen to
them all the time.
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Turn data into targeted ad space.
Or corporate sponsored.

36. Potential Rewards
of Free
1. Page Views
2. Social Following
3. RSS & RSS-to-email Subscribers
4. Email Subscribers
5. Ad Revenue
6. Product Revenue (Books, etc)
7. New Job

37. 1. Page Views
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Measures how many people visit
your site.
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Not very actionable.
!

38. 2. Social
Following
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Proof of thought leadership.
Not everyone sees every tweet or
Facebook post.

39. 3. RSS &
RSS to Email
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Proof of readership.
Not everyone reads RSS.
...people ditched RSS.

40. 4. Email Newsletter
Subscribers
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Personal communication (feels 1-to-1)
Highly trackable and actionable

41. 5. Ad Revenue
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$ = Sustainability
Overhead to manage ad space
Potentially annoying to users

42. 6. Product Revenue
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Highly sustainable
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Value builds over time
Repeat customers
“Stacking bricks”

43. 7. New Job
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Usually a result of what you did
for free.
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Usually awesome and more in-line
with your interests.

44. My Rewards
1. Page Views
2. Social Following
3. RSS & RSS-to-email Subscribers
4. Email Subscribers
5. Ad Revenue
6. Product Revenue (Books, etc)
7. New Job

45. Succeeded at idealism.
http://marcgrabanski.com/articles/developing-valuestronger-than-money

46. I failed at sustainability.

47. Avoid my mistakes...

48. Build a holistic following,
not just RSS and social.

49. Credit cards and email
addresses means they
like your stuff.

50. 100% free isn’t always holy
or righteous.

51. Think sustainability.

52. Publish paid products.
Can start with a $4.99
PDF using e-junkie or
leanpub

53. Maybe you won’t get
rich...

54. But you’ll gain
relationships with
people who like your
work enough to pay.

55. Customers grow with
you as you get better
over time and release
more products.
http://www.noeltock.com/startup-snippets/the-long-game/

56. Long term sustainability
is honorable.

57. Sustainable operations can
produce more free content

58. Questions?
!
Marc Grabanski
@1marc