Better Free than for Cheap

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

It’s better to work for free than for cheap. How’s that? Here are some examples that seem stranger than fiction.

Had an argument with your spouse? Whip out your iPhone and launch “Fix a Fight,” available for $9.99 from the iTunes store. No expensive therapists, no tense appointments with marriage counselors. Just the two of you and your handheld devices. Sound like fiction? “Fix a Fight” is real.

Demand Media is a “content farm.” They’ll pay you six bucks an hour or so for an article they turn around and sell to USA Today or maybe run on Lance Armstrong’s site Livestrong.com. If you make a film for Demand Media they will post it online and you can have what’s left over on the executive editor’s lunch plate. Sometimes it’s pretty good, like half a sandwich or something. Demand Media’s low pay makes professional writers unhappy, but Demand Media is real.

You can send yourself or anyone else an email from the future. Go to futureme.org and write a promise or wish, address it to anybody and date it for sometime in the future. It will be delivered when you are much older than you are now. Futureme.org is real and it’s also free.

Want a video of your company president explaining why your oil rig blew up? Pixability will send you a flip cam in the mail. You shoot some video of your guy apologizing to sea turtles or whatever, then mail back the camera. Pixability edits the video and you put it on line. Cost: $395. Pixibility is real. Those production companies that used to charge $15,000 for similar services? They are now fiction.

By allowing their content to be factory farmed (like Demand Media does) writers are only hurting themselves. By posting their videos for free on YouTube (mostly to Google’s benefit) visual artists are being economically blind. There’s an ugly kind of genius to convincing clients to make their own videos and then charging them for it but that business model can’t make for a pretty picture. There’s a market rate for professional producers, and below that rate you generally get crap. By the way, is saving your marriage really worth only $9.99?

Strange truth: People work harder and value their work more when it is done for free instead of being done for less-than-adequate pay. Rather than play this game, chasing the ever-diminishing dollar amount for online content, I have to wonder: Might it be better to stay away from Demand Media and the like? If you could, wouldn’t you choose to be paid well or else choose to work for free on deserving projects? Digital slavery doesn’t sound good.

Better to find the people who really value your work, whether that value comes from financial riches or in simple appreciation. Lance Armstrong has done lots of charity work for free. He’s been financially well-compensated as a champion. Do you think he’d consent to riding for $6 per hour? Why then would he expect writers to work at that level through Demand Media, which provides content for his site?

Now I’m going to send myself an email from the future. It’s free, but immensely valuable.

Photo credit: Indigotimbre via Creative Commons License.

Money and Power and Swimming with Sharks

Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema

This month I’m conducting an experiment in not striving. I’m nine days in. It’s going pretty badly. Pushing, grasping, wanting and hoping are kind of like getting up in the morning: I strive, therefore I am. Some sharks are like that – they can’t stop swimming because then they stop breathing. Let me try taking a breath while staying motionless in the water. How’s that feel? Terrible, can I start striving now?

Being meditative and reflective, accepting where you are and preparing to receive abundance are all really easy things to do. You can start by sitting cross-legged on a soft surface and staring into the sun until your eyeballs explode. No, that’s not what’s supposed to happen. But that’s what it feels like for me. I’ve never been good at meditative postures. I like running – did a 10K last weekend. After a couple miles I reach a humming-along-with-the-universe state that feels about right. Afterward I find my decision making clearer, I treat other people better and go easier on myself. I get just as much stuff done but with less effort. Is that what not striving is like? That might be worth striving for.

One path to not striving might be found in one’s relationship to power. As our friend Lotta said in her recent newsletter, “Power comes to us when we stop reaching for it. It’s actually always with us, but it’s our striving that gets in the way.” Striving doesn’t give us power. It can, in fact, take it away. The Soul of Money, by Lynne Twist, works this idea through, bringing in some thoughts on money.

“Each of us experiences a lifelong tug-of-war between our money interests and the calling of our soul. When we’re in the domain of soul, we act with integrity. We are thoughtful and generous, allowing, courageous, and committed. We recognize the value of love and friendship. We admire a small thing well done.”

Things change, she writes, when we enter the domain of money, and then, “It is as if we are suddenly transported to a different playing field where all the rules have changed. In the grip of money, those wonderful qualities of soul seem to be less available. We become smaller. We scramble or race to ‘get what’s ours.’ We often grow selfish, greedy, petty, fearful, or controlling, or sometimes confused, conflicted or guilty.”

Ok, let’s get real. The world is pretty greedy, petty, fearful and confused already, right? Does this mean I have to quit show business and work in a granola factory?

There will always be friends (I’m talking to you, East Coast) who will say “Who cares whether you cash your paycheck with integrity? Take the money and run.” Well, I’m thinking there’s more. I’m thinking Lance Armstrong, who came out of retirement to ride the Tour de France after winning seven times. He has a slim chance of winning eight times but he showed up anyway. “I feel good, I feel strong,” he said, as quoted by the AP. Showing up, feeling good, feeling strong, accepting where he is. There’s something to that.

What if you can do a job that fires you up, and therefore you can do it better, get paid more for it and stop and breathe at the same time? I can give that a go without striving for another 22 days at least.