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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

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Andrew has interviewed me twice for Mixergy. I don't begrudge him for making money off of his full-time job - I get promo for my projects through his platform.

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is probably fine if he is giving a portion to the people he interviewed. People go to mixergy to hear from them. It does also push people to check out interviews before they go behind the pay wall. However, I think this is a really bad business move, second only to using a fake name. It creates distrust and devalues the community aspect of the product.

A really bad business move is doing something that isn't sustainable. Given that giving his interviews away for free isn't sustainable, putting his content behind a paywall is probably an experiment to see if he can build a sustainable business.

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

#103

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.

Thanks. I think part of the problem is that people will see this as just a show as long as I don't take risks to elevate the work.

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

#104
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but that's a douchebag move if you don't warn Andrew ahead of time.

Information should always be free to the community and Mixergy should concentrate on monetization with different ways rather than subscription model....

Information should always be free to the community

Bullshit. Information is power.

Mixergy should concentrate on monetization with different ways rather than subscription model

Agreed.

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

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks. I think part of the problem is that people will see this as just a show as long as I don't take risks to elevate the work.

What's wrong with "just a show"? A show can both achieve a lot and can be worth a lot.

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

#106
I think people may have assumed Mixergy was a philanthropic service to the entrepreneurial community by Andrew, which is why some here seem quite upset about this decision..

I don't necessarily think instituting a pay wall for older videos is a bad idea.. I'd love to see Andrew post some stats for his community about how successful this decision is/was when the dust settles a bit.

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

#107
Here's what Andrew is doing; he's being enterprising:

"An enterprising person is willing to try out new, unusual ways of doing or achieving something."

I'm not agreeing that this is the best route for him to take, in fact, I don't think it will work (I could be wrong) - but there's nothing wrong with trying new things.

Andrew is obviously testing this, just sitting back and absorbing these comments and the financial results of this test.

I don't think this exact model will work, but at any rate, good luck

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

#109

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…

Good point. The interviewees had an understanding that this content will be freely available and now that's changed. Then again, maybe he told them the content will be free but there is a possibility that one day it will not be free anymore. Either way, the better approach would have been to leave existing interviews freely available and start applying the pricing structure from the present onward. On another note, I…

I hope this won't sound wrong, this is mixergy's about page:

   ...I used credit cards and ingenuity to create a $30+ mil / year (in sales) internet business... 
Sorry but after creating a $30+ mil annual sale company trying to sell videos for 25$ to max. 1000 people in a lifetime is not a great step forward for an entrepreneur.

Maybe he has a grand master plan to make more 30+$ mils with mixergy ....

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

#110
post #96

I'm slowly building a membership section, but I didn't mean to put this and every single other post on my homepage behind a pay-wall. The outsourcing company I use made a mistake. I fixed it this afternoon. But yes, I am moving towards a paid premium model that will include older interviews. And this won't be the last time I'll make a mistake.

It makes a lot more sense to me to put the recent interviews be behind the paywall, and make the back catalog free. It's typically the recent stuff that's 'hot' and therefore has the most value, while the older stuff tends to be more of a curiosity with less value. Plus, a wide-open back-catalog is more likely to attract references from places like wikipedia, from people trying to cite it.

IMHO that makes no sense.

The back catalog is more important to a real entrepreneur. Someone looking for entertainment in the disguise of education content would find the "hot" stuff interesting.

Someone building a business cares about specific topics because they are having issues with specific things like search engine marketing, sales people, partnerships, law, etc. That may or may not be covered by the latest "hot" stuff but a quick search in the back catalog is likely to turn up a good interview.

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