My experience with blogging and being easily reachable is that you mostly get people with very specific questions/problems. Not someone who is interested in meeting you.
Maybe try video blogging about fitness or fashion and cosmetics.
Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
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Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#12This sounds like the same behaviour from introducing fines for overdue library books or being late picking up children from day-care. It goes from a social olbigation or question ("Do I want to bother the day-care people by arriving late?" / "Do I want to bother this blogger and ask for their time?") to a financial transaction.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#13Title is a bit misleading, he became a popular academic/author and the proceedings are for charity. Once you are well known, you can charge for a lot of things, especially if it's for a good cause.
The weird part is that when he was well known, nobody reached out to get the "lot of things". I think it's because a lot of free stuff comes with a catch - free internet for one month, catch is you're stuck on a year long contract. Free consult but the catch is you're in their systems now, agreed to something in the small print, and you now get cold calls to sell you stuff. Free social network but the catch is your data and personal photos are used for marketing and training AI.
But charge $100 and that's it, that's all the strings attached. Straightforward transaction.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#14This reminds me of video that went simi viral a decade or so back. Not sure how much of it was staged, but the creators went to a public place and stood next to some “free hugs”-people and then put up a sign “Premium hugs $1” and apparently collected more hugs to the chargrin of the free-huggers.
If it's free, people are suspicious and judge the cost to be something implicit, generally with a higher expected cost than $1. On the other hand if you make the cost explicit, people are more comfortable.
It ties in with the story in Freakonomics about the daycare that started to charge a small "fine" to discourage parents picking up the child late, with the effect that these incidents happened more often. Because the cost went from implicit (shame, etc) to explicit (it's only $10).
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#15If you charge money successfully it signals you are legit enough to get others to pay.
Also when I see a cool person, I think my stuff is not good enough to waste their time, but if they charge for it, then it’s a deal.
Do people pay for knowledge or attention? Because let's be honest, most of the podcasts and books out there already contain more knowledge and wisdom than anyone needs to be successful in any profession.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#16This reminds me of video that went simi viral a decade or so back. Not sure how much of it was staged, but the creators went to a public place and stood next to some “free hugs”-people and then put up a sign “Premium hugs $1” and apparently collected more hugs to the chargrin of the free-huggers.
Similarly, people think FOSS software must not be as good as proprietary software because it's free.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also when I see a cool person, I think my stuff is not good enough to waste their time, but if they charge for it, then it’s a deal.
Do people pay for knowledge or attention? Because let's be honest, most of the podcasts and books out there already contain more knowledge and wisdom than anyone needs to be successful in any profession.
The thing about wisdom is its pretty hard to transmit, there are no quick fixes, so people end up fruitlessly chasing it.
Kind of like how some people will do one get rich quick scheme after another despite none of them working.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#18This reminds me of video that went simi viral a decade or so back. Not sure how much of it was staged, but the creators went to a public place and stood next to some “free hugs”-people and then put up a sign “Premium hugs $1” and apparently collected more hugs to the chargrin of the free-huggers.
The best way to get rid of junk is not to put it outside your house with “free” on it. It’s to put “$10” on it. Someone will steal it.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#19LLMs made things a lot easier but before them I wished there was a stackoverflow but paid, so you could pay someone for an answer if they happened to have specific information.
You could kind of emulate it by buying stackoverflow upvotes, then placing that as a bounty. Its not exactly money but it made it more comfortable (and successful) than hoping someone answers for free.
Re: Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
#20LLMs made things a lot easier but before them I wished there was a stackoverflow but paid, so you could pay someone for an answer if they happened to have specific information. You could kind of emulate it by buying stackoverflow upvotes, then placing that as a bounty. Its not exactly money but it made it more comfortable (and successful) than hoping someone answers for free.
SO bounties were kind of useless though weren't they? Timespans far too short for anyone with the right knowledge to notice besides professional bounty hunters, in the end you had to either give the sum to someone who didn't do the job or take the loss.