Why You can’t Make Money from Online Content

I’ve just read a truly excellent article by Stephen Downes entitled “Five Choices: Or, Why I Won’t Give Dave Pell Twelve Dollars” about why Content does not and will not sell on the net. He says:

Content didn’t sell on the net, and it won’t sell on the net, because the premises of the rejoinder are false: people sometimes don’t deserve to be paid, even if they work hard, because the market doesn’t work that way. And people will produce content, even if they don’t get paid for the content. The online evidence for this is overwhelming, as two billion free web pages will attest.

This is a really interesting read. Stephen runs a web site that is “intended to represent the next generation of learning”. I’m very interested in education, including online learning, I’ll have to keep an eye on Stepehen’s Web

Recommended.