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"Creating Content Is Expensive..."

kapookababy:

catbird:

Creating content is expensive. The cost of the tools may have dropped considerably, but the value of your time increases every minute you live past the age of 25, or move out of your parents’ house, whichever comes later…

I don’t think most people get this. I mean, I can’t think of a time when content has been more UNDERVALUED. Everyone seems to recognize that creating the TOOLS to create content is expensive, but creating the content? The attitude seems to be, “Hell, content is cheap- the users will just generate all that for us for free.”

Yeah, sure, that’s “content” under the strict definition of the word, but it’s not exactly what I would call quality content.

A VC will throw millions at the next faceless, useless, copycat SocNet/Youtube clone, but content? No one seems to think content is worth very much these days.

Yeah, and as someone who is more interested in content creation, than creating tools, this worries me. All content creators, writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists etc., must address the fact that the internet seems to monetarily reward those who build/own the tools, while creating content is increasingly heading to the “it’s something you do in your spare time” arena.

(There are some exceptions, but these are few. There aren’t too many millionaire bloggers, are there?)

Creating content isn’t considered “real work”. Is it real work?

I find creating content the hardest, and least thought about, process of developing a site. Obviously my web skills are not up to scratch when it comes to making innovative new platforms. But there is so much crap on the internet, it is hard to decided if we really want to add to that, or take the extra time to curate or create decent content.

Is it real work? Hell yes. It takes a lot of spare time and no one gets paid…it’s hard to write off that much time and effort in to a labour of love project. But I also like that I have something out side of work to keep my mind on, I just started work at a child care centre for fraks sake!