Mary Hodder’s new online video aggregation service Dabble is launching its balpha (that’s not quite beta but beyond alpha) next week. Om Malik, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine, reviewed the service this morning. I’m most interested in the service’s video playlists capability, where users will be able to package different videos together in something similar to an RSS feed reading list. Om reports that Mary put Dabble together in less than six months.
Mary decided four years ago to do what she loves and she urges others to do the same:
It doesn’t mean I don’t do a lot of hard, trying, difficult, long work, but I have to say, the overall goal, the project, the commitment, must be something I love. And frankly I haven’t worked for a second in the past four years. And I work all the time. Because it’s not work. Down with work that you hate! Do only work that you love. And the work will pour in, you will have more choices that you know what to do with, the quality will be high, the satisfaction will be high, your life will change, and your free time will become so much more satisfying.
In fact, I used to watch the clock to know when to quit the old kind of work I did. Now I’m afraid to look at the clock at all, because I have so much I want and need to do. [emphasis mine]
Mary references Paul Graham’s How to Do What You Love, an essay that describes the trickiness of doing what you love. Paul says:
Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.
One thing that must scare the wigs off of media moguls is that many writers and other content creators will work for free, because it’s so intrinsically enjoyable. In fact, they’ll pay to be able to create and publish content like essays, software, videos, and photographs. I’m a great example. Not only do I pay for TypePad for my momblog and Haloscan for the comments here, I am foregoing a six-figure income in software development for the opportunity to write and think and develop what I want. I am effectively paying more than $100,000 annualized in order to do what I love.
Newspapers, magazines, and book publishers have relied on the almost uncompensated work of writers for years. As anyone who’s considered or attempted freelance writing knows, you can earn a living at it, but barely, unless you’re one of the superstars. There’s little profit in it. Little financial profit that is. There are personal riches to be had in doing something you love.
Software companies have paid only average wages to programmers while executives take home multimillion dollar compensation packages. Now those companies face major competition from the programmers who decided they could make just as much on their own, doing what they love.
Doing what you love is not inconsistent with funding your work, as Mary has demonstrated by attracting angel funding for her service. To borrow from an old book title, “do what you love, the money will follow.” It might be just a trickle of money or, if you’re talented, tenacious, and fortunate, a torrent. This turns traditional media economics on its head. Big newspapers, magazines, old-school online services–they first figure out how to make the money and let that determine the content they produce. How will they adjust to the “me-first” mantra of Web 2.0?
2 Comments
this is so much of what ive been thinking about lately. i’m so glad i’m not the only one. and mary is happy. i just saw her this week!
Very very true. The trick is to find something that you love to do, but that you can still make money on in the initial stages. Or, maybe do something on the side to pay the bills while you spend most of the time on what you love?
Anyway, great post and links.
One Trackback
[…] A while ago, I wrote about how content creators will work for free, or even pay to be able to get their creations in front of an audience who cares. But what I failed to realize at that point was that the key change with Web 2.0 (or Media 2.0, if you prefer) is not that content creators aren’t motivated by money and therefore will work for free, but that those creatives can now distribute their work without inter-media-ries. In the past, creative types have always worked for very little money: think of freelancers scraping together a living with feature article assignments or independent filmmakers maxing out their credit cards to make their first movie. In many or perhaps most creative fields it’s the same. The drive to create isn’t based on a desire for money. In the past people without the creative urge but with a drive for money have been able to skim off the cream from the work of creators. No longer. Now, content has filed for divorce from advertising. Irreconcilable differences. Content no longer needs advertising to get published and to get to the people who want to watch it, read it, and listen to it. With Tivo, I can watch my favorite shows sans commercials. With industry analyst blogs and news feeds from IT periodicals, I know the latest on technology without seeing a single Sun or Oracle sponsored magazine page. With a shopping suggestion site like Stylehive, I can figure out what to buy without clicking on a single ad. […]