The Goldhat Blog

Antonio Rangel, associate professor of economics at the California Institute of Technology, led a study where 20 people participated in a blind taste test of various wines. The only information given to the tasters were the “prices” of each wine. They priced a $5.00 bottle at $45.00, a $90.00 bottle at $10.00 and, as a control, a $35.00 bottle at its actual price.  The affect that price had on each taster’s perception of quality was incredible, even to the point where the $5.00 wine was consistently rated tastier than the $90.00 wine. So powerful was price that when they put the tasters through an MRI machine, the scans indicated that each subject’s brain went into overdrive working to perceive quality that really wasn’t there.

It’s not a huge jump to assume that price is also a big factor when it comes to the content we consume on the internet. Most online content is free, and many will argue that some of it’s even better than the offline content we pay money for. But because the consumption of content is an extremely subjective experience, can we fool ourselves into thinking that the price we pay doesn’t affect our experience of internet content the way that it does for wine?

If you offer your content for free, chances are that more people will read, watch, or listen to it. You’ll get more traffic and you’ll get more subscribers. But will they appreciate your work as much as paying customers would? If they don’t invest any money into your ebook or web template or video tutorial, what’s to separate the perception of your web content from the flood of all the other free content out there? You can create great quality content, but the prejudice that comes with the “free” price tag is still there, and can take a lot of effort to overcome.

If someone pays money to have access to your content, however, they’ll pay more attention to it, they’ll make an effort to get every detail and nuance, and they’ll spend time finding ways to appreciate your work. Your customer wants to get their money’s worth and they’ll do it–even to the point of fooling themselves that they like your content more than they actually do. Although it sounds deceptive, it’s a hell of a lot better than fooling them that they like your content less than they actually do.

Charging money for your content will separate it from the crowd. Forget creating free ebooks, free videos and free articles in the hopes of getting traffic so that you can leverage it for profit in the distant future. Ask for money now and people will give your content the respect that it deserves.

Big news! Goldhat just got its first independent review!

Just a few weeks after launch, goldhat.org was found on KillerStartups.com, a website dedicated to finding the newest, coolest web startups out there. They did an excellent write-up on how the site works, so good that I’m wondering if I can’t borrow what they said about it for use on our own site.

You check out the review here.

Please be sure to vote up Goldhat on the site. Your votes will help us stay featured on a site that gets a TON of traffic. Just one click will go miles to help promoting Goldhat and our cause.

Thanks everyone for voting!

With all the millions upon millions of links out there, how do you choose? How do you find the stories that inspire you, the news that goes beyond the soundbite and gives you real insights about what’s going on? How do you find advice that’s so convincing that you not only agree with it, but act upon it? Where is that photograph, painting, or poem that has the potential to change your perspective forever?

They’re out there, but for every great link there are a thousand bad ones, and to sort through it all is exhausting. The overabundance of information and the lack of any reliable way to quickly determine the value of what you’re going to read or watch is the internet’s biggest limitation.

Content aggregators like Digg and Reddit have tried to solve this problem by having their users vote on links to content that they like and featuring links that receive the most votes. This filters out a lot of the crap, but despite hundreds of thousands of users and millions of votes, the front pages of these sites are filled with nothing more than five minute distractions: news stories about surfers punching sharks and pictures of cats watching fightened squirrels through screen doors. You’d have to spend an hour browsing through the pages just to find anything that approaches meaningful, quality content.

Votes are an unreliable gauge of quality because the voters must first choose the content they want to read or watch BEFORE voting. If, for example, voters had the choice between watching a one-minute gag video and a 30 minute short indie film, most would opt for the gag video because it requires less of a time commitment. Because more people choose to see the gag video more people will vote for it. Because more people will vote for it, the greater chance it has to be featured on Digg or Reddit. It doesn’t matter that the indie film could be the best thing the voters see all month. It’s much easier to go for (and vote for) the content that provides instant gratification.

Consider a scenario where one user decides to watch the 30 minute film and falls in love with it. If they wanted to promote it they’d vote for it, tweet it or share through facebook or twitter. This would help bring the film to wider audience, but few people will be motivated to watch it because they would risk wasting thirty minutes of their time.

But if that same user decides to make a $20.00 donation on goldhat, THAT will get people’s attention. They’ll want to know what was so great about the video that a user donated such a large amount. They’ll take the time to read the glowing review, and decide that if it was worth $20.00 to one person, it’s certainly worth spending 30 minutes watching the film for free. That $20.00 became more than just an expression of one person’s appreciation for someone’s else art,  it became an endorsement that expressed the film’s value, which can be many times more valuable to an artist than a $20.00 drop in the hat.

If one user is bold enough to toss a twenty into the hat, more users will be encouraged to watch. The more users that watch, the more users donate, and the more users donate, the more artists, writers, and creative people will be encouraged to create and publish works of enduring quality.

It’s up to us to make these donations, to inspire artists to have the courage to make something real and great. If we do this, we can change not only the way people find content on the internet, but we can also improve the quality of the content itself.  It might take a few bucks out of your pocket, but think about how many hours you spend on the internet. Wouldn’t you venture to spend just a few bucks on the off chance that you could make your experience a little better?

All it takes is a penny. Let’s do it.