Randy Cassingham's Blog

I can't wait to reveal this information to select parties! One of the reasons I frequent the blog is that my mail service counts my subscription as spam, so the blog lets me know when This is True came out, but another reason is all of these reports on what is actually happening in the world. Being mostly cut off from civilization as much of the population knows it, most of us in Japan have no idea what goes on unless we have a reliable source of information. I'm proud to say that you happen to be mine.

Oh, and as of right now, Google places this page at 6th.

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Actually, the blog doesn't always make it clear when True comes out, but you can always find the latest edition here. Meanwhile, I recommend Google's gmail if you want to actually receive mail you want. -rc

I heard this story on NPR about an experiment showing how people had an irrational attraction to free things, using, of all things, trick-or-treaters.

It went something like this:

The children were given 2 small candy bars. They were then given the option to get an additional small candy bar for "free", or a much larger one, by "paying" one of the small candies they already had.

Even though the second option gave them the most chocolate, the majority of the children opted for the "free" candy.

Ah, interesting topic, Randy. I started my business, ContinuingEdCourses.Net, five years ago based on the concept of giving online courses away for free.

We provide high quality continuing education courses for psychologists for free. After completing the course, the customer may pay for their Certificate of Completion in order to receive credit from their state licensing board. The beauty is that the fundamental business is selling certificates, so why not give the courses away for free?

An interesting secondary benefit of making the courses freely viewable by anyone, is that the search engines can also see the online courses (unlike our competitors who hide the courses behind a registration process), so our courses often rise to the top of Google and Yahoo searches.

People thought we were crazy to give our courses away, but this has turned out to be a great business!

This trend, specifically in the music industry, is the subject of the song Creative Commons Anthem by Rob Balder.

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It's absolutely the future of music -- with big record companies being the past, though they're still holding tight screaming "Noooooooooo!" I think, for instance, that if it can hold on long enough for the transition, Magnatune will be a big future player. -rc

Baen books gives away electronic copies of many of its titles, both at its website (www.baen.com) and in a CD included with some of the books when first published in hard cover. From comments at the website, authors report an increase in sales after these titles are posted on the site. So your model works in many areas.