More on Profit Pools, Pie Analogies and FREE
Several days ago I wrote an article titled Free Web Design Deflates the Industry Profit Pool and which Russ Weakley posted in his Some Links for Light Reading (14/04/10). It concerns me there is so much resistance to some basic business theory.
First, profit pools are not a theory of mine but are a critical element of contemporary business theory. Any management team looking to take over a steelworks knows his industry profit pool… as should we. The counter-argument to a profit pool is that you claim there are infinite customers willing to buy infinite products off you – that just isn’t possible considering only a finite number of people exist in the world.
Second, there seems to be a strong resistance in at least some people that feel FREE should continue to be supported and perpetuated in our industry. While I don’t for a second consider FREE will disappear, I’m arguing that the FREE work should not be of our own design and making. I’m a little tired of arguing about it.
FREE, as in FREE work, means Fuck Real Education & Employment.
People who support FREE labour are supporting exploitation, reduced overall industry profits and are contributing directly to the low esteem of our society around the expertise that we bring to the labour market.
There is a third element to this worth mentioning. Just because we worked for years at FREE then cheap then perhaps scraped our own job as experts getting in the door of some agency or as successful freelancers – don’t think that is the right way. Its wrong to be exploited and just as wrong to exploit. We need to nurture talent like real businesses do… not demand free portfolios of commercial work.
Free Not for Profit is fine… its volunteerism. Free friendship or personal stuff is how the world gets to be culturally richer. But anybody doing a commercial business a FREE website (or an unrealistically cheap $5 per hour website) needs to be frowned upon from within the industry because that is our profit pool, our livelihood.
I know that some people just won’t get this concept. That’s perfectly fine. I didn’t get into a Master of Business Administration because it was the easiest path in the world to study finance, economics, law, statistics, management, marketing and international business. But I’m here to tell you that there is a world of difference between what some people think is their industry and what it is in reality.
You have the opportunity to accept a culture change that improves overall profits… but more importantly that changes the value placed onto web professionals within our own organisations. All I can ask you to do is to think about that for a few minutes… [comments are off on this one].
