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This Is Why I Want To Have A Paid, Premium Section Of Mixergy

92 points by revorad 17y ago

AndrewWarner 17y ago
I imagine I'm going to get ripped again. But as harsh as the comments about this on HN were this weekend, they were also helpful. I think this will show you what I have in mind. If you don't want to say anything publicly, email me: mail at awarner dot com
- abstractbill 17y ago
  I think if you added some post-production to the older videos, and made sure the transcripts for them were really well edited and convenient to find and search, etc, this would be a great idea - you would be curating something of real value, and I would totally pay for older stuff if I missed it. Of course "how old" and "how much" are very important questions ;)
- andrewtj 17y ago
  For anyone who (like myself) missed Andrew getting 'ripped', it's over at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140456 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140456
- dpcan 17y ago
  Could you just put all the videos on a DVD every 6 months and sell the DVD for $40?
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    That's not a bad idea. Yet another alternative: Pay for access to the live interview (which might mean you get the opportunity to suggest a question that gets asked). Make the archived videos free after, say, a week.
  - covercash 17y ago
    I really like this idea. The one setback here is the initial quality of the video isn't the best (skype) so it may not look so hot on HDTVs. The video could be spiced up a bit by keeping the low res skype talking heads in the corner and filling the rest of the screen with supplemental information such as bullet points of key topics, demos of products and other similar, relevant information. This way Andrew can keep the basic skype interview on the site for free and charge for the DVDs that contain all of this exclusive bonus content. You could even bypass the DVD and just put the improved videos behind the paywall which gives viewers an incentive to actually pay.
  - patio11 17y ago
    The purpose of this suggestion is to guarantee people who are unwilling to pay instant access to the best, easiest way to get to the interviews, while giving the patrons time-delayed access to an inferior way to get to the interviews. I don't see that working out very well.
    - jfarmer 17y ago
      Seems no-risk to me. Put up an order form, play with pricing and DVD contents, etc. DVDs are easy to make and you can take orders before shipping. If you only get 10 orders, burn 'em, mail 'em, and shut down the service as a failure.
  - AndrewWarner 17y ago
    I prefer bits over atoms any day.
- jakecarpenter 17y ago
  Over the last several months your interviews have worked their way into my routine and I often turn to them for motivation and inspiration. I think that the opportunity to help other entrepreneurs is a big factor in folks being so candid with you and I hope that they continue to be so willing to participate. I'll gladly pay for your stuff, but I don't know that I really want subscribe to a service. What about charging for a podcast like product that rolled your transcript, interview, and bonus content into a single purchase? Throw it on iTunes and I'd give a few bucks per interview.
  - bendtheblock 17y ago
    I agree on both points here. If I'm ever feeling de-motivated I listen to a Mixergy interview and the story alone can make me focus on whatever it is I'm doing and see things in a broader context.
- detst 17y ago
  I really enjoy your work Andrew and no doubt think it has value beyond even what you are asking for it. Maybe you should have posted this before making the switch. I think people would have been less harsh and more likely to offer advice. As bad as you got "ripped", remember that most of us here put your work in very high regard. You've created so many great interviews that I keep telling myself that I'll eventually get around to watching as many as I can yet only watch a limited selection here and there. Perhaps this will force me to watch more in the first week or pay the price but I hope I don't stop watching.
  - AndrewWarner 17y ago
    Yes. I meant to. It was a goof. My plan was to create the premium service. Only apply it to older shows and let people pay whatever they want -- even nothing. Then tell the interviewees. And after all that, announce it. I worked on that plan for weeks, but then we goofed and the HN audience caught it quickly so I had to react.
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  I like your interviews, but don't usually have time to watch the whole length. I really like the short video snippets. You should be careful not to make transparency push too hard into vanity or navel-gazing. Multiple comment threads about your site are a real turn off, just like I don't give a fuck about Jason Calacanis or whether bloggers should pay attention to TED.
- frederickcook 17y ago
  I really like the idea of premium content. In many interviews, you can tell there is a lot more information the interviewee has on the subject, but won't fit into the 1-hour time constraint. I'm picturing something like Seth Godin's alternative MBA course. VC's and entrepreneurs constantly complain that MBA programs aren't useful, partly because they are taught by non-entrepreneurs. You have an opportunity to create some incredible content from people with the most relevant experiences. Feel free to be really creative with premium content.
- jhancock 17y ago
  Thanks for what you've done thus far. You've obviously put a lot of thought into this change. Go for it, I wish you success.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  Look, it's your site. You do what you want, of course. But getting into charging for content is a whole new game. Do you think you'd get some of the past interviewees if they'd known you were going to charge for access to the interview? Where's their cut? And others wouldn't have wanted to appear at all if their precious time was just going to a tiny paid audience. You say you're not happy with the view rates on older interviews. I consider this a problem with your site's design, which is really not much more than a blog. Go and look at TED's site, they have an excellent idea where the front page shows highlights from the past. Implementing something similar might work really well for you. I also think you're overestimating the ability or willingness of people here (your obvious audience) to pay anything at all. People here are trying to be "ramen profitable" and $25 is a lot of ramen. For every blowhard blustering (presumably making use of the satellite internet on their G) about how $25 is nothing and anyone who can't afford that should probably just give up, I guarantee you there's a hundred who can not just drop $25/m on a whim to watch some inspirational videos. I just think it's a bad idea. But like I said, hey, it's your site, and congratulations on your success so far.
  - AndrewWarner 17y ago
    When I said on the reg page that you can pay anything you want, I meant it. While I'm figuring this out and launching, I'm letting people name their price. Several said they could only pay $10 so I let them do that. A few said free, so I gave them free.
- icey 17y ago
  I'm glad to see you're doing something to make some money off of Mixergy, Andrew. If it means that you've got an incentive to keep doing these interviews, then it's worth it. Is $25 a month the right price? I have no idea. But I appreciate the straightforward nature of asking for a subscription. There are some good suggestions on your site as well, such as charging per interview in iTunes. If you haven't thought about it already, it might be interesting for you to partner up with sites like StartupToDo.com as well, or something like that. I've already watched most of your videos, so I don't know if I'm the right target audience for what you're selling right now. There is something I would pay more than $25 a month for though, but it would probably require more than just your work to make it happen - If I heard about a private mailing list that contained tips, advice, anecdotes, whatever that came from people like you, patio11, Jason Cohen, maybe maxklein (I'm undecided at the moment ;)), etc and I knew that the information sent out to that list wouldn't get made public for at least a month, I'd probably sprain my elbow trying to get my credit card out fast enough to start giving you my info. Maybe that's a model for you as well - private memberships get early access to interviews, not archive access. I mean, these things contain actionable information; I would think their greatest value would be right when they're made. Anyways, I'm sure you'll hit the right formula eventually. Nobody likes it when something that used to be free starts costing money; but if the product is good enough they'll get over it.
  - jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
    ive actually thought about doing something like this after thoroughly investigating email newsletters. not sure on the formula. not sure if you make it paid.
    - icey 17y ago
      I would prefer paid to ad-supported. If you're talking about the art of business on the internet, I'm a firm believer in the idea that there is an advantage to knowing about techniques and opportunities before everyone else does. A paid subscription limits the audience more than an ad-supported service would. I mean, it's got to provide actionable information for it to be worthwhile, but these guys have been giving actionable information away for free all this time anyways.
fjabre 17y ago
Donations might be a better way to make a little side cash. It's a very slippery slope when you get into charging for media content.. I would say using Mixergy as a springboard into something else, like a product, as Joel used his blog as a springboard for Fogbugz. You also have a great setup for doing promotional stuff but obviously you need massive numbers to make any real money that way. Best of luck in any case.
- andrewtj 17y ago
  Andrew's primary motivation isn't making cash. I don't see the connection between charging for media and a "slippery slope" - what are you referring to? If anything, isn't it better that he charge since then he's unlikely to need advertisers which would then make him more impartial when conducting interviews?
  - KWD 17y ago
    First reason under "Why I want to Charge" is "I want to earn money".
    - andrewtj 17y ago
      If you read all the way through you'll note that he sees money as a form of validation. Hence money is not his primary motivation, but rather a method for substantiating his value.
jackowayed 17y ago
With the transcripts free, is there really that much incentive to pay you money? I know there are advantages to them being available (getting search traffic to your site, for example), but it seems like it would only be for an extraordinary interview that I would be willing to pay a significant amount of money to watch rather than read. Also, if embedding makes it free forever, what's to keep me from starting a "blog" where I just embed each interview the day it comes out and thus have a free archive of all of your interviews?
omarchowdhury 17y ago
I'll pay. I enjoy the Mixergy interviews and I always find insight from hearing about other people's business that I translate into my own work.
samh 17y ago
I think you provide a lot of value and have every right to charge for it. I would think about the option of all videos being free forever but a monthly subscription to access a Mixergy forum, a members area, where people discuss the interviews and talk about the issues they raise. Use the interviews to create a high quality community that people are willing to pay to join.
dannyr 17y ago
It looks like Andrew's motivation is to drive more traffic to his site. It's like a having a "sale" every week by making new interviews free. By putting older content behind a paywall, he's going to drive more traffic to his latest interviews since people would want to get them for free. I actually like it and I hope it works.
- KWD 17y ago
  I actually think he will see less traffic, as the desire of someone to link to information behind a paywall will be a lot less.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I don't know, Andrew. I think there are two questions here. You asked our opinion, so here goes. 1) What charging model drives the most quality and response from readers? (This seems to be the crux of the argument from your blog) 2) How do I, as a startup founder, get the most from the internet and how do you fit into the picture? If I have to pay for material, why would your material be any better than, say, a few books, free videos, or making friends with other cofounders on a place like HN? It very well may be that you had 6,900 viewers of the PG interview, but here's the dirty little secret nobody talks about enough over here: there's about 500 tire-kicker, wannabe entrepreneurs for every real one. Probably a lot more. So your "audience" is probably largely consisting of people who like learning as much as they can without actually doing very much. The get a certain cachet out of participating in your interviews. If that's the case, then I say target those people: work towards more and more famous people and more and more quasi-in-depth interviews. Charge for older material. Set up a "Gold Ring" Entrepreneurs Circle or some other premium brand. This puts you in the startup media business, just like book sellers or the pay-for-feedback guys. However from my end I think we'll part ways here, at least as far as your paid service goes. Startups have about a thousand different facets and I need to know just enough about each of them but not too much. That means I need instantaneous feedback and a conversation, not an hour-long video from famous person X on how tough it was ten years ago to make their first million. That works great for mass media, but I need to know how to roll out a beta of a social networking site on a limited budget. I need to be able to ask questions about specifics around this topic and I need to know it within the next couple of hours. HN gives me that immediate feedback, and as the amount of material on HN grows, I get all sorts of historical information in easily-searched text format without having to pay anything at all. Hope that makes some sense to you.
- uniwiz 17y ago
  If his videos don't have a value to you, go buy books. People who will find value in his material will pay for it. I really do not see a point of comments like yours.
- gioiam 17y ago
  I believe some of the value that Andrew offers is in the description of his videos. When I click on an interview I have an idea of what topics are going to be discussed. If I have certain information that I am looking for one of the ways I research is by looking at the Mixergy archives. I understand what you are saying about the value of immediate feedback, however the next best thing to me are Andrews interviews.
netcan 17y ago
Reiterating my comment from that page: It's good that you wrote this Andrew, I like that it has some creative thought behind it. I don't think there is much of a business model in directly selling this kind of content, but I may be wrong. I'm also a bit suspicious of attempts to manufacture scarcity, but I am certain there are ways of doing this that are not wrong. You put at risk all the benefits of Free: long tail traffic (I think you could be doing a lot better on search, especially video search), goodwill (or avoiding this strange hate against charging), letting a newcomer dive into mixergy content, cherry-picking interviews they think they'll like and becoming a fan. All that said, I'm glad you are experimenting. You may discover something really valuabl. As long as you aren't locking yourself into a model, I think it will be worthwhile either way. * I suggest considering a serious redesign to support this sort of approach and giving it the best chance. I think you may be bending the blog form a little further then it'll go.
rubyrescue 17y ago
Best line in the post: ...I bet you if I stop charging for it for just 1 week, people would jump on it for the limited time it's free... Suddenly, old is valuable.
- akkartik 17y ago
  That's the one reason I disagree with. If people aren't looking at your old stuff it's because they have to put more effort into finding it. If he offered it for a limited time he'd get a lot more views, but how much of that is just because of the link in the article that now shows up on the front page? Moving to non-free may give you a temporary boost; organizing the archives would structurally improve page views on old content.
jakarta 17y ago
I still think this is the wrong approach. Interviews are tough to monetize because the benefits are pretty intangible. The Charlie Rose model is better I think. Where you do long 1 hr interviews and get sponsorships to help pay for costs. It depends on growing an audience but it can work. Another idea -- what if Andrew was able to put together conferences/events given the ties he has. He could charge for admission and have a panel of start up entrepreneurs where he interviews and moderates Q&As between the audience and entrepreneurs. Conferences are generally pretty profitable and could be worth exploring.
- colinplamondon 17y ago
  The Charlie Rose model only works when you're interviewing less niche figures. Rose has on lots of brilliant people, but they tend to be talking about current events, business, books, literature, art- it's a wide variety, and that helps build a broad audience. Mixergy's about successful entrepreneurs. That's niche. That just doesn't have the potential size to be pushing a large enough volume that sponsorships matter. To get a larger audience it'd be necessary to expand the subject matter, and that would dilute the value of the site itself. A better option might be to interview successful figures about how they became successful, and expand more outside of tech entrepreneurship. There's been a couple of interviews like that, and weighting it 1/3 tech, 2/3 successful figures in other arenas, there's a much larger potential audience. At the same time, keeping the laser-like focus on the nuts and bolts and numbers would craft a high-end audience, the kind that advertisers absolutely love.
- davidmurphy 17y ago
  This article on Charlie Rose is fascinating: http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/25/magazines/fortune/charlie_rose.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/25/magazines/fortune/charlie_ro... He actually doesn't make a huge ton of money (he'd do well to hire sponsorship sales staff IMO).
bhp 17y ago
Wait, you're going to allow paying members to embed your paywall-protected videos on other sites to be viewed by non-members for free? If so, could I just register mixergyfreeinterviews.com and offer your entire archive there? The free-embed idea is definitely risky, but it might help if you require there to be a certain amount of unique text/editorial surrounding the embedded video in order to avoid abuse. Otherwise, I'm going out right now to register that domain.
- mdolon 17y ago
  Well, if he's allowing you to download the videos as well what's to stop you from uploading them to YouTube? I agree with you though, he should definitely limit access to maintain control, especially for the sake of his bandwidth expenses.
  - middus 17y ago
    The fact that he does not have the right to upload them to YouTube!?
- kareemm 17y ago
  that's kind of a dick move. while MixergyFreeInterviews.com might not violate the letter of what Andrew's trying to do, it certainly violates the spirit.
  - bhp 17y ago
    I obviously wouldn't actually register that domain... I was just making a point. Somebody else would do it.
    - kareemm 17y ago
      It wasn't obvious, you forgot the sarcasm emoticon. (Incidentally, did you know "sarcasm" comes from the Latin sarcasmos, which means "to tear flesh"? Me neither!)
kitcar 17y ago
IMHO a better model is to actually offer something of value to your paying members, rather than than trying to create artificial scarcity. For example, paid membership gives you live access to influence the interview, by selecting / voting on some of the questions which will be asked (slashdot style?)
- pheon 17y ago
  this is a great point. providing a premium membership that allows your members to ask the interviewers direct and interesting questions. guessing your price point for that could be fairly high.
mdolon 17y ago
In all honesty, while I value your interviews tremendously, I would not pay for them if the transcripts were readily available. Is video advertising not worthwhile for the amount of traffic you get? That would be fairly painless for all parties involved and definitely fine to most users, as we have to deal with it on YouTube and almost all news outlets.
patio11 17y ago
I'm just going to say directly what I've implied previously: if you think $25 is a lot of money, you may be a wonderful snowflake but you're not a wonderful customer to a business which hopes to provide strategic intelligence to other businesses. Accordingly, your opinion on the pricing is less than relevant. If anything, $100 a month is too low because it invites comparisons to thinks like the NYT instead of comparisons to things like research reports produced by the big intelligence firms. (e.g. if you want to download ten pages of executive summary on the current state of credit card usage in the Japanese consumer market is, I think that will run you about a thousand bucks.) I used to pay $100 a month for another service which has roughly the same value proposition (not naming it to avoid shilling), and paid for it in perpetuity by five words of microcopy it caused me to add to my purchasing page. Everything after that was gravy. I don't want to imply that five words doubled my conversions -- nothing close. It is just that a move-the-needle effect anywhere in a business where all factors are multiplicative achieves $100 so fast your head will spin. For those of you whose firms could lose my business in the petty cash drawer, changes so small I'm unable to even construct tests with sufficient precision to detect them will generate more than $100 a month.
- kyro 17y ago
  I don't understand. If people do not think that Andrew's product is worth $25 a month, then so be it. This is the nature of product pricing - there will always be people who you will piss off and who think it's not worth it, and there are those who will be willing to pay up. The audience you're talking to pays for many other services, whether it's basecamp, their linode instance, pingdom, etc, not to mention their internet access. Quit patronizing people for not wanting to pay for a service. Andrew could've said he'd charge $100 a month, and you still would've made the same comment. There's nothing wrong with charging your customers, but when you decide to, you're setting yourself up for this kind of resistance, and that's ok. It's how it works. I love Andrew's work, but at this time, I simply cannot 'waste' $25 on it. I don't have a steady income and am trying to save.
  - bhp 17y ago
    I don't have a steady income and am trying to save. This is the case for most college students and entrepreneurs who haven't been successful yet. These people, including myself, are who mixergy's interviews might be most valuable to. We know that the interviews are invaluable, but we don't always have the $$$ to show for it.
jacoblyles 17y ago
An alternative would be to charge for the new stuff and release the old stuff for free. This carries a different set of incentives with it. I think people would be more likely to pay for new stuff, and this would leave a greater body of links to be rediscovered on social news sites and blogs.
iamelgringo 17y ago
This is Hacker news. And, as much as I hate to say it, if you put up a pay wall, it's just going to be a matter of time before someone writes a script to download each video and put up a torrent of it as you release it onto your site. We're entrepreneurs, and at the point where some of that information would be really useful to us, we're usually broke and in need of advice/help. Charging broke entrepreneurs to access your archive of content seems counter intuitive. What I would be willing to pay for, however, is having access to a library of edited 4-5 minute videos. I'd really be willing to pay for those videos if I could search through or navigate those videos by specific questions and answers. That's the service that I want, and that would be worth around $10-14 a month to me. And, as a reference point, I carried a Safari Library subscription for several years at $45 a month, which allowed me instant access to all of O'Reilly books library as well as a library of videos. I also pay to rent movies on Amazon at $2.99 a pop. I pay Rhapsody a $14 month subscription to have access to 1.5 million tracks of music on demand. I also pay Pandora $30 a year to have pretty good music recommendations streamed to me.
epi0Bauqu 17y ago
I'm in a very similar situation to Andrew. (We've spoken over email a bunch, but for the sake of furthering this discussion, I'm just going to make this public.) I'm also doing a video interview series, albeit on a smaller scale and even more niche (on getting traction). I plan on ramping this up significantly over the next few months, and eventually doing other niches I think will be valuable to this crowd. I also don't need the money, but I agree with Andrew that it sets an example and it creates a seriousness in the project (whereas with a hobby you can get lazy, which I have certainly been). However, my core motivation (and I think Andrew's as well) is to help aspiring entrepreneurs. To do that, I think you want as wide an audience as possible on the videos. There is an empirical question here that is unanswered: whether a paywall will actually increase video usage or not. Andrew will be able to answer that shortly, but I suspect it will not increase usage of the older content. This is why I've made the decision to keep all interviews online and free. Instead any monetization will be done by books and/or DVDs. So here's one more possible trajectory for you: 1) Segment your interviews into sub-niches. 2) Get good transcripts. 3) Add synthesis and commentary around each sub-niche. 4) Sell books/dvds around each sub-niche. 5) Post the full transcript on each video page to get random SEO traffic. 6) Upsell your books/dvds (but not annoyingly). Yes, I realize a lot of the book value will be on the Web (in both video and text form). But I think people will still buy your books.
- AndrewWarner 17y ago
  I've always been happy to share my results with you via email Gabriel. Let's talk in a couple of months on the results of this.
yosho 17y ago
Hi Andrew, I really enjoy a lot of what you do, however, I think you should offer additional value for paying customers besides just the old archives. Maybe do special premium interviews just for paying customers, or write a startup e-book, or get rid of all ads etc. Also, one of my issues with the interviews is that they're all really really long. I don't have a lot of time in the day, and sitting through an hour+ interview can be hard. I'd suggest mixing up the lengths of interviews and maybe doing short quick interviews where the responder can only respond with one sentence or word. Anyway keep up the good work.
wgj 17y ago
Andrew: I've been a Mixergy fan for awhile. I watch what I can, when I can. The interviews are long, but definitely substantial. In other words, they should be long. Your preparation, the quality of the content, and the selection of your subjects, are all excellent. Pay for it? I haven't decided yet, but probably. I think a lot of other people will as well. The key is to make the subscription help bridge the gap stated above. Busy people are making money and will spend some of it to save time and get straight to the content they need. Bored people are not making money and won't pay for Mixergy content because they have all the time in the world to look on torrents or elsewhere. Your free vs. pay formula: I believe this current version of it sounds very savvy. You are giving a lot away, and at exactly the right place, while the premium charge is also mostly for the right things. By making new content always free, you make it easy for people to post and discuss in places such as here on HN. By allowing free embedding on blogs and other sites, you encourage conversation elsewhere. This is important and you've obviously thought about it. Bottom line, let busy people pay to save time and attention. Understand that bored people can't/won't pay, but they may still be loyal fans. Cheers, and good luck with the changes.
SirWart 17y ago
I really like the idea of adding additional value to the archive. Right now it's just a really long alphabetical list, but it would seem more valuable if it was categorized by the type of advice/information in each interview so you could listen to them in the order you felt was relevant to you. The idea of an unorganized archive just feels low value to me, which is the opposite of what I consider most of your content.
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sailormoon 17y ago
How can you respect what's taught on Mixergy if you see that I'm not bringing in real revenue? You can't. I guess PG better start charging for his essays, then! That is, if he wants us to respect him.
- SirWart 17y ago
  If his full-time job was writing essays then I'd hope he charge for him. edit: After reading it again, I think this is a poor retort. Paul's essays on entrepreneurship are better written and more insightful because he's actually been an entrepreneur. Hopefully Andrew's interviews become better and more insightful as he tries to put what his interviewees preach into practice. Journalism is full of people who write about things they've only read or heard about, and I think there's really no substitute for experiencing something firsthand as a way to understand it.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    So readers should, after reading the essays, go and look up whether he has any other jobs before deciding whether or not to respect them? Ridiculous.
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- marciovm123 17y ago
  He does; go to amazon.com and search for paul graham and you'll get a bunch of premium-consumption options for his work.
  - staunch 17y ago
    He's got a single book of some of his essays (Hackers & Painters) for sale. He doesn't charge you for access to any of the essays on his site (which I believe is every one he's released). He doesn't even have ads on there.
volomike 17y ago
Unless you're providing something pretty substantial and have tremendous traffic numbers to prove it, paywalls just don't work. Rupert Murdoch is trying these now and finding out it's not working well. People just won't use you -- they'll go somewhere else. Instead, affiliate marketing is the way to go. Try different CPA, PPC, and CPM ad network arrangements with split-testing to see which ones work best for your niche, or choose from 2 or all 3 of those types but try different vendors. John Chow is a millionaire thanks to his blog, but also thanks to the sales funnel he gets for people who sign up on his site. I have a buddy in London who has a PC support forum with ads on it and he's earned $150,000 in ad revenue alone since 2005. So alternative means to paywalls can be very lucrative if played well. I read that Andrew says he's all excited about seeing traffic numbers of 10,000. And I'm thinking, "10,000? That's pathetic. It's a good start, but not something as proof that I need to build a paywall." But don't get me wrong -- sometimes paywalls work really well. For instance, stock investors and daytraders pay for membership sites to get access to daily stock tips from pros. But the numbers, and the unique-ness of the content, justify that paywall.
davidmurphy 17y ago
Not loving this idea.... Keep in mind your target audience may be struggling entrepreneurs who are broke (like me). Or perhaps you're targeting the free site for us, and targeting the paid archive for more well to do folks.
llimllib 17y ago
> My idea is different from what others have done It's not entirely new, of course. I call it the "This American Life" model.
friendstock 17y ago
perhaps subscription model (that affects everyone) is not the right model. Perhaps you can find something that 1% of your viewership would pay $1000 for... Check out Justin Smith's InsideFacebook which charges for premium research reports. I think there might be enough VCs, tech research analysts, etc. who would pay that sort of premium for mixergy to get an inside scoop.
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akikuchi 17y ago
I'm a fan of Mixergy interviews, but only occasionally check what's new- the incentive is not there when I'm not consciously planning on spending an hour. This model will make me more likely to check the site more often. The analytics will give a better picture (and I'm sure many of us would be very interested in seeing how traffic changes if Andrew would like to share that down the road), but count me as one user whose behavior will be influenced by this change. I'm doubtful that I'll end up as a paid subscriber, but my sense is that subscriber revenue is relatively less important compared to the potentially powerful effect of creating the sense of urgency among users.
askar 17y ago
I normally listen to your wonderful work pretty much whenever I can have my headphone on. These days my iPhone carries more of your interviews than any music. You are doing a fantastic job Andrew, no doubt about that. I think $25 is reasonable to me but can't vouch for others. I would think may be arriving at a middle price point would certainly make the cut. As others here pointed out, I'm not sure if it's fair to charge all of a sudden without the interviewees knowing about it. And I'm not sure if the quality of your interview would ever change just to keep the paying audience happy!
jakecarpenter 17y ago
I think you should definitely give the premium service model a shot. Even if it doesn't prove to be your final business model, you've already proven that you know what entrepreneurs want to hear, so maybe you could move into hosting panels/luncheons or similar.
briguy 17y ago
Before making such a drastic change, perhaps you can test your concept (increasing viewer-ship by decreasing the alloted time to view a show) by implementing a TV/Cable model. Have a Regular time period that you air a new show (perhaps for 3 days). Then put the video into "Reruns". If you go to Mixergy.com, you will only have the Last 3 new shows + 3 random re-runs. This will bring old videos to the forefront again and will limit your supply which might increase the demand as people would be worried that they would not see a show until it happened to come back into re-runs. Also, would have people coming back to look what is being re-run that day in the hopes of finding an old classic. Then you can have the All Paid Access that give you access to full archives. However non-paid users can still get lucky and see their favorites in re-runs, however would be motivated to watch new shows before they go away.
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maxklein 17y ago
I know one business well and it unfortunately affects my thought on every strategy. All the same, let me offer my solution based off what you want mixed in with my perception on the right price ranges: - User arrives on page. The page says - all old interviews are available for purchase on iTunes for $4.99. There is an app store link - There is another little link saying - don't have iTunes? Want access to our full archive for a year? Want to download the file in multiple formats as well as the raw live interview file? Want to support mixergy? Purchase an "Archive membership" card for $99 a year - A yellow highlighted text: "But wait, there is a way for you to watch this interview for free right now. Simply copy and paste this embed code into your website, blog about it, hit the play button and watch it. You get the free video, I get some publicity"
- dantheman 17y ago
  The only problem with that is you're in effect writing a blog post about something you haven't seen, or are merely creating a post that says -- "I intend to watch this"
- AndrewWarner 17y ago
  Max, these are good suggestions. I'll see if I can implement those after this is done. I'm willing to try other ideas.
mdg 17y ago
I mean, the interviews are good and all, but really, it is just a substitute for white noise so I have something to listen to while working. SO podcast fills the same void.

92 points by revorad 17y ago

I imagine I'm going to get ripped again. But as harsh as the comments about this on HN were this weekend, they were also helpful. I think this will show you what I have in mind. If you don't want to say anything publicly, email me: mail at awarner dot com

abstractbill 17y ago
I think if you added some post-production to the older videos, and made sure the transcripts for them were really well edited and convenient to find and search, etc, this would be a great idea - you would be curating something of real value, and I would totally pay for older stuff if I missed it. Of course "how old" and "how much" are very important questions ;)
andrewtj 17y ago
For anyone who (like myself) missed Andrew getting 'ripped', it's over at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140456 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140456
dpcan 17y ago
Could you just put all the videos on a DVD every 6 months and sell the DVD for $40?
- abstractbill 17y ago
  That's not a bad idea. Yet another alternative: Pay for access to the live interview (which might mean you get the opportunity to suggest a question that gets asked). Make the archived videos free after, say, a week.
- covercash 17y ago
  I really like this idea. The one setback here is the initial quality of the video isn't the best (skype) so it may not look so hot on HDTVs. The video could be spiced up a bit by keeping the low res skype talking heads in the corner and filling the rest of the screen with supplemental information such as bullet points of key topics, demos of products and other similar, relevant information. This way Andrew can keep the basic skype interview on the site for free and charge for the DVDs that contain all of this exclusive bonus content. You could even bypass the DVD and just put the improved videos behind the paywall which gives viewers an incentive to actually pay.
- patio11 17y ago
  The purpose of this suggestion is to guarantee people who are unwilling to pay instant access to the best, easiest way to get to the interviews, while giving the patrons time-delayed access to an inferior way to get to the interviews. I don't see that working out very well.
  - jfarmer 17y ago
    Seems no-risk to me. Put up an order form, play with pricing and DVD contents, etc. DVDs are easy to make and you can take orders before shipping. If you only get 10 orders, burn 'em, mail 'em, and shut down the service as a failure.
- AndrewWarner 17y ago
  I prefer bits over atoms any day.
jakecarpenter 17y ago
Over the last several months your interviews have worked their way into my routine and I often turn to them for motivation and inspiration. I think that the opportunity to help other entrepreneurs is a big factor in folks being so candid with you and I hope that they continue to be so willing to participate. I'll gladly pay for your stuff, but I don't know that I really want subscribe to a service. What about charging for a podcast like product that rolled your transcript, interview, and bonus content into a single purchase? Throw it on iTunes and I'd give a few bucks per interview.
- bendtheblock 17y ago
  I agree on both points here. If I'm ever feeling de-motivated I listen to a Mixergy interview and the story alone can make me focus on whatever it is I'm doing and see things in a broader context.
detst 17y ago
I really enjoy your work Andrew and no doubt think it has value beyond even what you are asking for it. Maybe you should have posted this before making the switch. I think people would have been less harsh and more likely to offer advice. As bad as you got "ripped", remember that most of us here put your work in very high regard. You've created so many great interviews that I keep telling myself that I'll eventually get around to watching as many as I can yet only watch a limited selection here and there. Perhaps this will force me to watch more in the first week or pay the price but I hope I don't stop watching.
- AndrewWarner 17y ago
  Yes. I meant to. It was a goof. My plan was to create the premium service. Only apply it to older shows and let people pay whatever they want -- even nothing. Then tell the interviewees. And after all that, announce it. I worked on that plan for weeks, but then we goofed and the HN audience caught it quickly so I had to react.
ivankirigin 17y ago
I like your interviews, but don't usually have time to watch the whole length. I really like the short video snippets. You should be careful not to make transparency push too hard into vanity or navel-gazing. Multiple comment threads about your site are a real turn off, just like I don't give a fuck about Jason Calacanis or whether bloggers should pay attention to TED.
frederickcook 17y ago
I really like the idea of premium content. In many interviews, you can tell there is a lot more information the interviewee has on the subject, but won't fit into the 1-hour time constraint. I'm picturing something like Seth Godin's alternative MBA course. VC's and entrepreneurs constantly complain that MBA programs aren't useful, partly because they are taught by non-entrepreneurs. You have an opportunity to create some incredible content from people with the most relevant experiences. Feel free to be really creative with premium content.
jhancock 17y ago
Thanks for what you've done thus far. You've obviously put a lot of thought into this change. Go for it, I wish you success.
sailormoon 17y ago
Look, it's your site. You do what you want, of course. But getting into charging for content is a whole new game. Do you think you'd get some of the past interviewees if they'd known you were going to charge for access to the interview? Where's their cut? And others wouldn't have wanted to appear at all if their precious time was just going to a tiny paid audience. You say you're not happy with the view rates on older interviews. I consider this a problem with your site's design, which is really not much more than a blog. Go and look at TED's site, they have an excellent idea where the front page shows highlights from the past. Implementing something similar might work really well for you. I also think you're overestimating the ability or willingness of people here (your obvious audience) to pay anything at all. People here are trying to be "ramen profitable" and $25 is a lot of ramen. For every blowhard blustering (presumably making use of the satellite internet on their G) about how $25 is nothing and anyone who can't afford that should probably just give up, I guarantee you there's a hundred who can not just drop $25/m on a whim to watch some inspirational videos. I just think it's a bad idea. But like I said, hey, it's your site, and congratulations on your success so far.
- AndrewWarner 17y ago
  When I said on the reg page that you can pay anything you want, I meant it. While I'm figuring this out and launching, I'm letting people name their price. Several said they could only pay $10 so I let them do that. A few said free, so I gave them free.
icey 17y ago
I'm glad to see you're doing something to make some money off of Mixergy, Andrew. If it means that you've got an incentive to keep doing these interviews, then it's worth it. Is $25 a month the right price? I have no idea. But I appreciate the straightforward nature of asking for a subscription. There are some good suggestions on your site as well, such as charging per interview in iTunes. If you haven't thought about it already, it might be interesting for you to partner up with sites like StartupToDo.com as well, or something like that. I've already watched most of your videos, so I don't know if I'm the right target audience for what you're selling right now. There is something I would pay more than $25 a month for though, but it would probably require more than just your work to make it happen - If I heard about a private mailing list that contained tips, advice, anecdotes, whatever that came from people like you, patio11, Jason Cohen, maybe maxklein (I'm undecided at the moment ;)), etc and I knew that the information sent out to that list wouldn't get made public for at least a month, I'd probably sprain my elbow trying to get my credit card out fast enough to start giving you my info. Maybe that's a model for you as well - private memberships get early access to interviews, not archive access. I mean, these things contain actionable information; I would think their greatest value would be right when they're made. Anyways, I'm sure you'll hit the right formula eventually. Nobody likes it when something that used to be free starts costing money; but if the product is good enough they'll get over it.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
  ive actually thought about doing something like this after thoroughly investigating email newsletters. not sure on the formula. not sure if you make it paid.
  - icey 17y ago
    I would prefer paid to ad-supported. If you're talking about the art of business on the internet, I'm a firm believer in the idea that there is an advantage to knowing about techniques and opportunities before everyone else does. A paid subscription limits the audience more than an ad-supported service would. I mean, it's got to provide actionable information for it to be worthwhile, but these guys have been giving actionable information away for free all this time anyways.

fjabre 17y ago

Donations might be a better way to make a little side cash. It's a very slippery slope when you get into charging for media content.. I would say using Mixergy as a springboard into something else, like a product, as Joel used his blog as a springboard for Fogbugz. You also have a great setup for doing promotional stuff but obviously you need massive numbers to make any real money that way. Best of luck in any case.

andrewtj 17y ago
Andrew's primary motivation isn't making cash. I don't see the connection between charging for media and a "slippery slope" - what are you referring to? If anything, isn't it better that he charge since then he's unlikely to need advertisers which would then make him more impartial when conducting interviews?
- KWD 17y ago
  First reason under "Why I want to Charge" is "I want to earn money".
  - andrewtj 17y ago
    If you read all the way through you'll note that he sees money as a form of validation. Hence money is not his primary motivation, but rather a method for substantiating his value.

jackowayed 17y ago

With the transcripts free, is there really that much incentive to pay you money? I know there are advantages to them being available (getting search traffic to your site, for example), but it seems like it would only be for an extraordinary interview that I would be willing to pay a significant amount of money to watch rather than read. Also, if embedding makes it free forever, what's to keep me from starting a "blog" where I just embed each interview the day it comes out and thus have a free archive of all of your interviews?

omarchowdhury 17y ago

I'll pay. I enjoy the Mixergy interviews and I always find insight from hearing about other people's business that I translate into my own work.

samh 17y ago

I think you provide a lot of value and have every right to charge for it. I would think about the option of all videos being free forever but a monthly subscription to access a Mixergy forum, a members area, where people discuss the interviews and talk about the issues they raise. Use the interviews to create a high quality community that people are willing to pay to join.

dannyr 17y ago

It looks like Andrew's motivation is to drive more traffic to his site. It's like a having a "sale" every week by making new interviews free. By putting older content behind a paywall, he's going to drive more traffic to his latest interviews since people would want to get them for free. I actually like it and I hope it works.

KWD 17y ago
I actually think he will see less traffic, as the desire of someone to link to information behind a paywall will be a lot less.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I don't know, Andrew. I think there are two questions here. You asked our opinion, so here goes. 1) What charging model drives the most quality and response from readers? (This seems to be the crux of the argument from your blog) 2) How do I, as a startup founder, get the most from the internet and how do you fit into the picture? If I have to pay for material, why would your material be any better than, say, a few books, free videos, or making friends with other cofounders on a place like HN? It very well may be that you had 6,900 viewers of the PG interview, but here's the dirty little secret nobody talks about enough over here: there's about 500 tire-kicker, wannabe entrepreneurs for every real one. Probably a lot more. So your "audience" is probably largely consisting of people who like learning as much as they can without actually doing very much. The get a certain cachet out of participating in your interviews. If that's the case, then I say target those people: work towards more and more famous people and more and more quasi-in-depth interviews. Charge for older material. Set up a "Gold Ring" Entrepreneurs Circle or some other premium brand. This puts you in the startup media business, just like book sellers or the pay-for-feedback guys. However from my end I think we'll part ways here, at least as far as your paid service goes. Startups have about a thousand different facets and I need to know just enough about each of them but not too much. That means I need instantaneous feedback and a conversation, not an hour-long video from famous person X on how tough it was ten years ago to make their first million. That works great for mass media, but I need to know how to roll out a beta of a social networking site on a limited budget. I need to be able to ask questions about specifics around this topic and I need to know it within the next couple of hours. HN gives me that immediate feedback, and as the amount of material on HN grows, I get all sorts of historical information in easily-searched text format without having to pay anything at all. Hope that makes some sense to you.

uniwiz 17y ago
If his videos don't have a value to you, go buy books. People who will find value in his material will pay for it. I really do not see a point of comments like yours.
gioiam 17y ago
I believe some of the value that Andrew offers is in the description of his videos. When I click on an interview I have an idea of what topics are going to be discussed. If I have certain information that I am looking for one of the ways I research is by looking at the Mixergy archives. I understand what you are saying about the value of immediate feedback, however the next best thing to me are Andrews interviews.

netcan 17y ago

Reiterating my comment from that page: It's good that you wrote this Andrew, I like that it has some creative thought behind it. I don't think there is much of a business model in directly selling this kind of content, but I may be wrong. I'm also a bit suspicious of attempts to manufacture scarcity, but I am certain there are ways of doing this that are not wrong. You put at risk all the benefits of Free: long tail traffic (I think you could be doing a lot better on search, especially video search), goodwill (or avoiding this strange hate against charging), letting a newcomer dive into mixergy content, cherry-picking interviews they think they'll like and becoming a fan. All that said, I'm glad you are experimenting. You may discover something really valuabl. As long as you aren't locking yourself into a model, I think it will be worthwhile either way. * I suggest considering a serious redesign to support this sort of approach and giving it the best chance. I think you may be bending the blog form a little further then it'll go.

rubyrescue 17y ago

Best line in the post: ...I bet you if I stop charging for it for just 1 week, people would jump on it for the limited time it's free... Suddenly, old is valuable.

akkartik 17y ago
That's the one reason I disagree with. If people aren't looking at your old stuff it's because they have to put more effort into finding it. If he offered it for a limited time he'd get a lot more views, but how much of that is just because of the link in the article that now shows up on the front page? Moving to non-free may give you a temporary boost; organizing the archives would structurally improve page views on old content.

jakarta 17y ago

I still think this is the wrong approach. Interviews are tough to monetize because the benefits are pretty intangible. The Charlie Rose model is better I think. Where you do long 1 hr interviews and get sponsorships to help pay for costs. It depends on growing an audience but it can work. Another idea -- what if Andrew was able to put together conferences/events given the ties he has. He could charge for admission and have a panel of start up entrepreneurs where he interviews and moderates Q&As between the audience and entrepreneurs. Conferences are generally pretty profitable and could be worth exploring.

colinplamondon 17y ago
The Charlie Rose model only works when you're interviewing less niche figures. Rose has on lots of brilliant people, but they tend to be talking about current events, business, books, literature, art- it's a wide variety, and that helps build a broad audience. Mixergy's about successful entrepreneurs. That's niche. That just doesn't have the potential size to be pushing a large enough volume that sponsorships matter. To get a larger audience it'd be necessary to expand the subject matter, and that would dilute the value of the site itself. A better option might be to interview successful figures about how they became successful, and expand more outside of tech entrepreneurship. There's been a couple of interviews like that, and weighting it 1/3 tech, 2/3 successful figures in other arenas, there's a much larger potential audience. At the same time, keeping the laser-like focus on the nuts and bolts and numbers would craft a high-end audience, the kind that advertisers absolutely love.
davidmurphy 17y ago
This article on Charlie Rose is fascinating: http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/25/magazines/fortune/charlie_rose.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/25/magazines/fortune/charlie_ro... He actually doesn't make a huge ton of money (he'd do well to hire sponsorship sales staff IMO).

bhp 17y ago

Wait, you're going to allow paying members to embed your paywall-protected videos on other sites to be viewed by non-members for free? If so, could I just register mixergyfreeinterviews.com and offer your entire archive there? The free-embed idea is definitely risky, but it might help if you require there to be a certain amount of unique text/editorial surrounding the embedded video in order to avoid abuse. Otherwise, I'm going out right now to register that domain.

mdolon 17y ago
Well, if he's allowing you to download the videos as well what's to stop you from uploading them to YouTube? I agree with you though, he should definitely limit access to maintain control, especially for the sake of his bandwidth expenses.
- middus 17y ago
  The fact that he does not have the right to upload them to YouTube!?
kareemm 17y ago
that's kind of a dick move. while MixergyFreeInterviews.com might not violate the letter of what Andrew's trying to do, it certainly violates the spirit.
- bhp 17y ago
  I obviously wouldn't actually register that domain... I was just making a point. Somebody else would do it.
  - kareemm 17y ago
    It wasn't obvious, you forgot the sarcasm emoticon. (Incidentally, did you know "sarcasm" comes from the Latin sarcasmos, which means "to tear flesh"? Me neither!)

kitcar 17y ago

IMHO a better model is to actually offer something of value to your paying members, rather than than trying to create artificial scarcity. For example, paid membership gives you live access to influence the interview, by selecting / voting on some of the questions which will be asked (slashdot style?)

pheon 17y ago
this is a great point. providing a premium membership that allows your members to ask the interviewers direct and interesting questions. guessing your price point for that could be fairly high.

mdolon 17y ago

In all honesty, while I value your interviews tremendously, I would not pay for them if the transcripts were readily available. Is video advertising not worthwhile for the amount of traffic you get? That would be fairly painless for all parties involved and definitely fine to most users, as we have to deal with it on YouTube and almost all news outlets.

patio11 17y ago

I'm just going to say directly what I've implied previously: if you think $25 is a lot of money, you may be a wonderful snowflake but you're not a wonderful customer to a business which hopes to provide strategic intelligence to other businesses. Accordingly, your opinion on the pricing is less than relevant. If anything, $100 a month is too low because it invites comparisons to thinks like the NYT instead of comparisons to things like research reports produced by the big intelligence firms. (e.g. if you want to download ten pages of executive summary on the current state of credit card usage in the Japanese consumer market is, I think that will run you about a thousand bucks.) I used to pay $100 a month for another service which has roughly the same value proposition (not naming it to avoid shilling), and paid for it in perpetuity by five words of microcopy it caused me to add to my purchasing page. Everything after that was gravy. I don't want to imply that five words doubled my conversions -- nothing close. It is just that a move-the-needle effect anywhere in a business where all factors are multiplicative achieves $100 so fast your head will spin. For those of you whose firms could lose my business in the petty cash drawer, changes so small I'm unable to even construct tests with sufficient precision to detect them will generate more than $100 a month.

kyro 17y ago
I don't understand. If people do not think that Andrew's product is worth $25 a month, then so be it. This is the nature of product pricing - there will always be people who you will piss off and who think it's not worth it, and there are those who will be willing to pay up. The audience you're talking to pays for many other services, whether it's basecamp, their linode instance, pingdom, etc, not to mention their internet access. Quit patronizing people for not wanting to pay for a service. Andrew could've said he'd charge $100 a month, and you still would've made the same comment. There's nothing wrong with charging your customers, but when you decide to, you're setting yourself up for this kind of resistance, and that's ok. It's how it works. I love Andrew's work, but at this time, I simply cannot 'waste' $25 on it. I don't have a steady income and am trying to save.
- bhp 17y ago
  I don't have a steady income and am trying to save. This is the case for most college students and entrepreneurs who haven't been successful yet. These people, including myself, are who mixergy's interviews might be most valuable to. We know that the interviews are invaluable, but we don't always have the $$$ to show for it.

jacoblyles 17y ago

An alternative would be to charge for the new stuff and release the old stuff for free. This carries a different set of incentives with it. I think people would be more likely to pay for new stuff, and this would leave a greater body of links to be rediscovered on social news sites and blogs.

iamelgringo 17y ago

This is Hacker news. And, as much as I hate to say it, if you put up a pay wall, it's just going to be a matter of time before someone writes a script to download each video and put up a torrent of it as you release it onto your site. We're entrepreneurs, and at the point where some of that information would be really useful to us, we're usually broke and in need of advice/help. Charging broke entrepreneurs to access your archive of content seems counter intuitive. What I would be willing to pay for, however, is having access to a library of edited 4-5 minute videos. I'd really be willing to pay for those videos if I could search through or navigate those videos by specific questions and answers. That's the service that I want, and that would be worth around $10-14 a month to me. And, as a reference point, I carried a Safari Library subscription for several years at $45 a month, which allowed me instant access to all of O'Reilly books library as well as a library of videos. I also pay to rent movies on Amazon at $2.99 a pop. I pay Rhapsody a $14 month subscription to have access to 1.5 million tracks of music on demand. I also pay Pandora $30 a year to have pretty good music recommendations streamed to me.

epi0Bauqu 17y ago

I'm in a very similar situation to Andrew. (We've spoken over email a bunch, but for the sake of furthering this discussion, I'm just going to make this public.) I'm also doing a video interview series, albeit on a smaller scale and even more niche (on getting traction). I plan on ramping this up significantly over the next few months, and eventually doing other niches I think will be valuable to this crowd. I also don't need the money, but I agree with Andrew that it sets an example and it creates a seriousness in the project (whereas with a hobby you can get lazy, which I have certainly been). However, my core motivation (and I think Andrew's as well) is to help aspiring entrepreneurs. To do that, I think you want as wide an audience as possible on the videos. There is an empirical question here that is unanswered: whether a paywall will actually increase video usage or not. Andrew will be able to answer that shortly, but I suspect it will not increase usage of the older content. This is why I've made the decision to keep all interviews online and free. Instead any monetization will be done by books and/or DVDs. So here's one more possible trajectory for you: 1) Segment your interviews into sub-niches. 2) Get good transcripts. 3) Add synthesis and commentary around each sub-niche. 4) Sell books/dvds around each sub-niche. 5) Post the full transcript on each video page to get random SEO traffic. 6) Upsell your books/dvds (but not annoyingly). Yes, I realize a lot of the book value will be on the Web (in both video and text form). But I think people will still buy your books.

AndrewWarner 17y ago
I've always been happy to share my results with you via email Gabriel. Let's talk in a couple of months on the results of this.

yosho 17y ago

Hi Andrew, I really enjoy a lot of what you do, however, I think you should offer additional value for paying customers besides just the old archives. Maybe do special premium interviews just for paying customers, or write a startup e-book, or get rid of all ads etc. Also, one of my issues with the interviews is that they're all really really long. I don't have a lot of time in the day, and sitting through an hour+ interview can be hard. I'd suggest mixing up the lengths of interviews and maybe doing short quick interviews where the responder can only respond with one sentence or word. Anyway keep up the good work.

wgj 17y ago

Andrew: I've been a Mixergy fan for awhile. I watch what I can, when I can. The interviews are long, but definitely substantial. In other words, they should be long. Your preparation, the quality of the content, and the selection of your subjects, are all excellent. Pay for it? I haven't decided yet, but probably. I think a lot of other people will as well. The key is to make the subscription help bridge the gap stated above. Busy people are making money and will spend some of it to save time and get straight to the content they need. Bored people are not making money and won't pay for Mixergy content because they have all the time in the world to look on torrents or elsewhere. Your free vs. pay formula: I believe this current version of it sounds very savvy. You are giving a lot away, and at exactly the right place, while the premium charge is also mostly for the right things. By making new content always free, you make it easy for people to post and discuss in places such as here on HN. By allowing free embedding on blogs and other sites, you encourage conversation elsewhere. This is important and you've obviously thought about it. Bottom line, let busy people pay to save time and attention. Understand that bored people can't/won't pay, but they may still be loyal fans. Cheers, and good luck with the changes.

SirWart 17y ago

I really like the idea of adding additional value to the archive. Right now it's just a really long alphabetical list, but it would seem more valuable if it was categorized by the type of advice/information in each interview so you could listen to them in the order you felt was relevant to you. The idea of an unorganized archive just feels low value to me, which is the opposite of what I consider most of your content.

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sailormoon 17y ago

How can you respect what's taught on Mixergy if you see that I'm not bringing in real revenue? You can't. I guess PG better start charging for his essays, then! That is, if he wants us to respect him.

SirWart 17y ago
If his full-time job was writing essays then I'd hope he charge for him. edit: After reading it again, I think this is a poor retort. Paul's essays on entrepreneurship are better written and more insightful because he's actually been an entrepreneur. Hopefully Andrew's interviews become better and more insightful as he tries to put what his interviewees preach into practice. Journalism is full of people who write about things they've only read or heard about, and I think there's really no substitute for experiencing something firsthand as a way to understand it.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  So readers should, after reading the essays, go and look up whether he has any other jobs before deciding whether or not to respect them? Ridiculous.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
marciovm123 17y ago
He does; go to amazon.com and search for paul graham and you'll get a bunch of premium-consumption options for his work.
- staunch 17y ago
  He's got a single book of some of his essays (Hackers & Painters) for sale. He doesn't charge you for access to any of the essays on his site (which I believe is every one he's released). He doesn't even have ads on there.

volomike 17y ago

Unless you're providing something pretty substantial and have tremendous traffic numbers to prove it, paywalls just don't work. Rupert Murdoch is trying these now and finding out it's not working well. People just won't use you -- they'll go somewhere else. Instead, affiliate marketing is the way to go. Try different CPA, PPC, and CPM ad network arrangements with split-testing to see which ones work best for your niche, or choose from 2 or all 3 of those types but try different vendors. John Chow is a millionaire thanks to his blog, but also thanks to the sales funnel he gets for people who sign up on his site. I have a buddy in London who has a PC support forum with ads on it and he's earned $150,000 in ad revenue alone since 2005. So alternative means to paywalls can be very lucrative if played well. I read that Andrew says he's all excited about seeing traffic numbers of 10,000. And I'm thinking, "10,000? That's pathetic. It's a good start, but not something as proof that I need to build a paywall." But don't get me wrong -- sometimes paywalls work really well. For instance, stock investors and daytraders pay for membership sites to get access to daily stock tips from pros. But the numbers, and the unique-ness of the content, justify that paywall.

davidmurphy 17y ago

Not loving this idea.... Keep in mind your target audience may be struggling entrepreneurs who are broke (like me). Or perhaps you're targeting the free site for us, and targeting the paid archive for more well to do folks.

llimllib 17y ago

> My idea is different from what others have done It's not entirely new, of course. I call it the "This American Life" model.

friendstock 17y ago

perhaps subscription model (that affects everyone) is not the right model. Perhaps you can find something that 1% of your viewership would pay $1000 for... Check out Justin Smith's InsideFacebook which charges for premium research reports. I think there might be enough VCs, tech research analysts, etc. who would pay that sort of premium for mixergy to get an inside scoop.

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akikuchi 17y ago

I'm a fan of Mixergy interviews, but only occasionally check what's new- the incentive is not there when I'm not consciously planning on spending an hour. This model will make me more likely to check the site more often. The analytics will give a better picture (and I'm sure many of us would be very interested in seeing how traffic changes if Andrew would like to share that down the road), but count me as one user whose behavior will be influenced by this change. I'm doubtful that I'll end up as a paid subscriber, but my sense is that subscriber revenue is relatively less important compared to the potentially powerful effect of creating the sense of urgency among users.

askar 17y ago

I normally listen to your wonderful work pretty much whenever I can have my headphone on. These days my iPhone carries more of your interviews than any music. You are doing a fantastic job Andrew, no doubt about that. I think $25 is reasonable to me but can't vouch for others. I would think may be arriving at a middle price point would certainly make the cut. As others here pointed out, I'm not sure if it's fair to charge all of a sudden without the interviewees knowing about it. And I'm not sure if the quality of your interview would ever change just to keep the paying audience happy!

jakecarpenter 17y ago

I think you should definitely give the premium service model a shot. Even if it doesn't prove to be your final business model, you've already proven that you know what entrepreneurs want to hear, so maybe you could move into hosting panels/luncheons or similar.

briguy 17y ago

Before making such a drastic change, perhaps you can test your concept (increasing viewer-ship by decreasing the alloted time to view a show) by implementing a TV/Cable model. Have a Regular time period that you air a new show (perhaps for 3 days). Then put the video into "Reruns". If you go to Mixergy.com, you will only have the Last 3 new shows + 3 random re-runs. This will bring old videos to the forefront again and will limit your supply which might increase the demand as people would be worried that they would not see a show until it happened to come back into re-runs. Also, would have people coming back to look what is being re-run that day in the hopes of finding an old classic. Then you can have the All Paid Access that give you access to full archives. However non-paid users can still get lucky and see their favorites in re-runs, however would be motivated to watch new shows before they go away.

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maxklein 17y ago

I know one business well and it unfortunately affects my thought on every strategy. All the same, let me offer my solution based off what you want mixed in with my perception on the right price ranges: - User arrives on page. The page says - all old interviews are available for purchase on iTunes for $4.99. There is an app store link - There is another little link saying - don't have iTunes? Want access to our full archive for a year? Want to download the file in multiple formats as well as the raw live interview file? Want to support mixergy? Purchase an "Archive membership" card for $99 a year - A yellow highlighted text: "But wait, there is a way for you to watch this interview for free right now. Simply copy and paste this embed code into your website, blog about it, hit the play button and watch it. You get the free video, I get some publicity"

dantheman 17y ago
The only problem with that is you're in effect writing a blog post about something you haven't seen, or are merely creating a post that says -- "I intend to watch this"
AndrewWarner 17y ago
Max, these are good suggestions. I'll see if I can implement those after this is done. I'm willing to try other ideas.

mdg 17y ago

I mean, the interviews are good and all, but really, it is just a substitute for white noise so I have something to listen to while working. SO podcast fills the same void.