A week ago I finished reading FREE – THE FUTURE OF A RADICAL PRICE by Chris Anderson the editor of Wired magazine.  Personally, the book didn’t do much for me, but it kept me thinking if photography with “the radical price of free” can have a future?

According to Chris Anderson’s book there are 3 free strategies:

Free as a direct cross-subsidy

Give away the product to sell a service. Think of phone companies who give away the phone to sell the plan. Yep, we love those. Those are the companies with the lowest customer satisfaction, followed by the ones who give us free checking.

Free as a three party market where one customer class subsidizes another

Give away content and sell access to the audience. Think of Google with its web search, selling targeted advertising spots. Or think of YouTube allowing free video sharing and still trying to figure out who will pay for it. Well, Google does right now with roughly 490 million US$ a year according to Credit Suisse.  Ouch! Or just a simple blog about photography selling ad space to support the labor of love.

Free as a freemium where some customers subsidize the others

Give away a basic version and sell the full version.  Think of lite software versions in the iPhone app store and full version in the pay section.

Let’s dress it up however we want, but what it comes down to is, that free is pricing and pricing is part of the marketing mix.  So for an editorial, commercial or art photographer these 3 free models have a few things in common. They are all part of a marketing strategy and specifically a strategy to push a brand or a product, to create good karma, to grow a company fast and to disguise the real costs of the product.

And I think that’s where the free has its relevance in photography.

For a start I was thinking of

• give away a small print  and charge for larger sizes.
• give away images  for limited use to create awareness
• personal projects.
• shoot a job for free (or at cost) to gain access to a client
• leave behinds

Unfortunately despite the ubiquitous digital bits and bytes this all comes to the photographer at a price. As a friend yesterday said. “Its all free, but it is still going to cost you.”

Could we work for free completely? Being able to create and to just give away. Let’s look here at the poster children of the free-conomy. The Flickrs, Facebooks, Twitters, Diggs and YouTubes. They all exist for half a century now because of deep-pocketed investors who are putting up the tab of hundred millions of dollars they are burning through every year. OK, Flickr supposedly makes a little money. They are all struggling to find a way to monetize free and their investors are sitting by the sidelines keeping them afloat hoping for the big exit.  Can photographers have equity partners / investors? Why not? We could then create without economic restraints as well. Think of the painter Vincent van Gogh who would not have existed as an artist if he hadn’t been sponsored by his brother. Vincent van Gogh basically painted for free. Let’s create a sponsor pool for photography and make the images free for its members. Could that be a solution?

To me free has to be seen under the larger important aspect of “give and get”. You have to give in order to get and that is where free comes in today.  So is it radical? No. Is it the future? Yes, but it has always existed and is nothing new at all.

Just a last, a bit philosophical thought on free. I think free in its pure form incorporates some destructiveness. Our society is called free, but at the same time we found it necessary to limit our freedom to be able to exist. Reducing the free to a sustainable version of free. This would be a crazy place if it were totally free. And free in one society isn’t the same as it is  next door. Look at imagery in media in different countries.  Nudity in European media is not a problem. And then think of the earth shattering Nipplegate a few years back at the Superbowl.  Free isn’t free at all in its true meaning and free is being defined differently wherever you go.

Free is marketing. Make use of it if it pays.