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Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

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Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#21

Post by grumpyfart »

akshat wrote: post #19
grumpyfart wrote: post #17

What about interviewees ? They spent an hour assuming their video would be available by anyone but later on they found out he started to charge of it? Does it fair? (I assume that he didn't inform them beforehand) Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I lo…

"And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I love to listen Paul Graham talk on stuff but none of the interviews are actually ground-breaking or great, it's just good time." Calling the interviews chit-chat is nothing short of demeaning the effort of both Andrew and the interviewee. I would argue that the interviews are great and do teach us a lot. Often as part of the interview other parts such as history are cov…

There is nothing wrong with chit-chat :) Actually I do love chit-chat.

I didn't mean bad, what I meant they are conversational interviews, they are not focused on teaching you something. The very nature of these interviews is the reason that I wouldn't pay money for them.

I'd pay for MIT Startup Bootcamp videos because they are solely focus on something which directly potentially almost instantly will effect my business (if the topic is relevant). In these interview I'm lucky if I can pick up 2-3 things by pure luck.

So again I don't mean bad, I think they are really nice, but it's like renting a video from a video store. Not great for business but great to watch and have a good time.

However if I'm going to pay I expect the get some more actionable outcome from it.

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#22

Post by ankeshk »

Just videos = not worth $25 a month in my humble opinion - especially when the transcripts are not behind the pay wall.

But if he adds a forum - he can create a good membership site out of mixergy. And $25 per month for it is doable.

(I personally think its just an experiment to control high bandwidth costs...)

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#23

Post by iconfinder »

grumpyfart wrote: post #17

What about interviewees ? They spent an hour assuming their video would be available by anyone but later on they found out he started to charge of it? Does it fair? (I assume that he didn't inform them beforehand) Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I lo…

I don't agree that these interviews are just chit-chat and feel that I have learned a lot from these interviews. I have subscribed on these nice (free) interviews for 9 months now and listen to them many times a week. Paying the subscription fee is a great way to pay Andrew back for all the hard work he has put into these interviews.

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#24

Post by revorad »

When I found out about this I emailed Andrew. This is what i wrote:

I noticed recently that you've started charging for your older interviews. Good on you, I hope you do good business.

I have one idea you might want to consider: Sell short edited versions of the interviews. This is the opposite of what most online ebook and tutorial video sellers do. They show some short teasers for free, but ask you to pay for the "full program". In your case, the full program is the teaser - it's a treasure hunt to find the golden nuggets of business wisdom interspersed in 60 minutes of internet video chat. I bet you lose out on a lot of viewers simply because they don't have the time to sit through hour-long interviews. I think you could sell edited, 15-minute versions to those people. Cheapskates like me will continue to watch for free, but people with less time will pay for condensed honey drops of entrepreneurship gyaan. Actually, I might pay too as I get busier with my business.

Andrew replied saying he loves the idea and has has a vision along those lines; he just needs the time and resources for doing it. As he has stated in his own interviews before, he is trying to create an internet treasure which will have long lasting value. I'm sure he won't let us down.

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#26

Post by mikecolella »

I just signed up simply to support his work even though I watch all the interviews in the first week anyway. For me, the content is worth more than $25/month. I would also like to see a forum as added value.

I'm not sure that this is the best possible model, but if it's not then Andrew will figure it out once he has some data.

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#27

Post by ArcticCelt »

chaosmachine wrote: post #18
grumpyfart wrote: post #17

What about interviewees ? They spent an hour assuming their video would be available by anyone but later on they found out he started to charge of it? Does it fair? (I assume that he didn't inform them beforehand) Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I lo…

I was just going to post the same thing. If I was an interviewee, I'd be kind of pissed I'd given my time for free, just so someone else could throw it behind a paywall.

I am tempted to start contacting some of his old interviewees and ask them what they think about it. I'll ask them to contact him if they are pissed by the fact that they were tricked into giving their free time. Many of them precisely said in those interviews that they were only doing it to give back to the community.

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#28

Post by [deleted] »

chaosmachine wrote: post #18
grumpyfart wrote: post #17

What about interviewees ? They spent an hour assuming their video would be available by anyone but later on they found out he started to charge of it? Does it fair? (I assume that he didn't inform them beforehand) Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I lo…

I was just going to post the same thing. If I was an interviewee, I'd be kind of pissed I'd given my time for free, just so someone else could throw it behind a paywall.

[deleted]

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#29

Post by scootklein »

As much as Jason Calacanis can be annoying, This Week in Startups is always a great show and he seems to have found a great monetization strategy for it - corporate sponsors of service providers to startup people.

I probably won't be paying for Mixergy on a monthly basis, but if he were to get a couple companies to sponsor the show for a couple hundred dollars an episode i would gladly sit through the intermittent plugs he would give throughout the broadcast.

Re: Mixergy is now a paid subscription service for interviews older than a week

#30

Post by Concours »

Hey Andrew, what about letting those videos be free, and selling DVDs per months, peoples can watch the content online for free (advertising support) in this way you keep growing and peoples willing to pay can order videos on a dvd, let's say each interview on a dvd cost 5 $. Next option, you can aggregate videos of each month as dvd and sell them for ~9,99 $ , and the next alternative will be to create an ebook from the transcripts of each month videos and sell it for a couple or dollars, you can organise this in topic (ebook transcript for freemium Business model, ebook for videos plattform entrepreneurs.....you can combine it as you want: we call in in mechanical eng variants)... That's my 2 cents. Some peoples may pay the 25 $ , but most of your users won't, if you want to go with the subscription , what about 1,99 $ /months * many users and steady grow?
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