English man in Font

Now that the hoards have come, downloaded, watched, and left, there is some sort of return to normality. I have to confess that I thought a lot about my expectations of how the film would be received. I ended up being somewhat overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted to see it, which as you may have seen even caused my site to go down. It was only a temporary glitch and soon everything was back online, but that did serve as a shock in terms of popularity. This is enough ego massaging though, as I do want to report back on how the experiment turned out.
As you (hopefully) read I released this film on the premise that you can take it for free but the option was there to donate something. It might not have seemed like an experiment but in my mind it was exactly that. How many people would donate for something they could get for free? From those who would donate, would they be my friends, my acquaintances, or just randoms? What condition would link those who chose to donate and those who didn’t? These were the things that I was wondering about and I know have the numbers to analyse in order to get my answers.

At least 1100 people downloaded the film directly from my website and another few hundred did so via the torrent. I can’t be sure of the torrent numbers because I can’t get snatch statistics from tpb, but from monitoring the number of seeds/peers since I started I’ve built up a fairly good picture. I would guess that total downloads are somewhere towards 1500. This doesn’t include people who watched it online via bleau.info so the total number is potentially slightly higher. I didn’t have any expectations about the percent of people I thought would donate and so I approached it with a completely open mind. I was certainly intrigued but I certainly didn’t expect anything. You’re probably wondering how many people did donate? I suggest you have a think to yourself, perhaps come up with a number in your head. I think it’s fair to presents the results now based on the viewing statistics of my website. It peaked and has now tailed off, so I would guess that over 90% of people who want it have already got it or seen it. I also want to state that my presentation of these results should in no way affect your decision of whether or not to donate. I’m not presenting them in the hope of eliciting further donations, simply as an answer to my questions of the whole principle behind freeconomics. I hope you have a number in your head, or at least a percentage. Why? Because then you can ask yourself why there is such a big discrepancy between what you thought and the reality, or you can congratulate yourself of being so correct! The total number of people who chose to make a donation (valid up till this date) is the grand total of sixteen. If you want that as a percentage then it’s (very) approximately 1%, (thanks Joachim!). I am genuinely intrigued by these results to be honest. I should also add that the majority of them came from people I have never met and that I don’t know. So, what to make of these results? Well, it seems that if you give something away for free then you can’t expect to get anything in return. Perhaps the climbing world isn’t ready for a principle of freeconomics. I’ve asked myself if I would pay for a film in a similar situation. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I haven’t ever paid for a climbing DVD, and this is primarily because I think they cost too much. I think £20 for a DVD is too much, unless it’s a production run of, say, 100. But with economies of scale and worldwide distribution, I think it should be possible to make money by selling them for less. However, I don’t have all the information on climbing DVD sales/profits/costs etc so I’m saying that in total ignorance. What I do know is that it’s cost me actual money to give this film away. Clearly that’s a bad business model because I’m losing money and that can’t last forever! But I am very glad that I did it this way, and also because I had little choice. The only other option was doing something like Doylo did with West Coast Gimps, and sell them for £10 each but have a much smaller distribution. I weighed up the pro’s/con’s and decided I would prefer it if more people simply enjoyed watching it, rather than me getting any sort of money back. If this film motivated someone to visit Fontainebleau and enjoy climbing there then it was a success. If it motivated someone to go out climbing then it was also a success. As much as it pains me to say it, the greatest successes aren’t necessarily monetary. However, I still want to make a shedload of money and as soon as possible (without cessation of all the things I love to do!).

I have gleaned some ideas about the future of such freeconomics and asking for money probably isn’t the best way of doing it. Whilst this wasn’t a super strict application of freeconomics, it was close, and it did enable me to find some answers to questions that played on my mind. I think that most smart businesses understand the difference between free and nearly free. To quote a very funny man by the name of James Hilliard “Whats £2.50 a month? nothing”. Surely this is the mentality of the masses. Whilst you approach the point of free (being zero) then the final part of the curve (the tail end) is so close to zero that it is often regarded as zero. It would seem that extracting incredibly small amounts of money from lots of people would be the best path to financial reimbursement. At least that’s what my small experiment leads me to believe.

I do want to thank the 16 people who donated. I appreciate that you made the effort to give up some of your hard earned cash and give it to some guy who just loves to go rock climbing.

Speaking of rock climbing, which I have done far too little of, I am going over to Denmark on Wednesday and then Kjugekull for the weekend. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go ever since seeing a short film that Julien Nadiras made, which featured an incredible arete called Everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. Whilst it may be far too hot for any serious crushing, I am looking forward to a weekend exploring what is a completely new area for me. I’m returning for one day and then I’m packing the chariot and driving south (imagine Alexis Korner saying that) to Switzerland. My first appointment is with Radja and the second is with Magic Wood. I hope that my return to rock can be accompanied by a return to blogging, and that I can write something that I hope you’ll find interesting.

The beautiful struggle continues. Peace.