dsbatten on Nostr: Paid or free? If you value serving others above all else, its always a nuanced ...

Paid or free?

If you value serving others above all else, its always a nuanced question to answer.

At my first software company, we had the same dilemma. In the end, we created a paid version of our software (a niche product for molecular biologists). It was the right move, and we could not have sold to a larger buyer years later without it.

Because of that I gained more street-cred to help more tech founders as a coach, and make more of a difference. This year I had the same dilemma.

I started a newsletter. It got great feedback. But then ... First, the guy I wrote it with turned on an option to voluntarily pay. I wasn't sure, but thought "OK let's try it and see. To my surprise, many people took that option.

Because of that I was able to pay him, which has helped him get one step closer to his dream to get a job inside the Bitcoin ecosystem. Then something I didn't expect happened. 2 subscribers challenged me on why I was still even giving the option of free, saying it was "paid content quality" and making it free devalued it. Whenever I'm unsure of something, I like to run experiments.

So ... I decided to run an experiment and announce I was ending the free subscription period in a couple of months.

Immediately a group of people subscribed.

Because of that, I had the resources to fire up another Bitcoin project: launch http://Da-ri.org: an institution grade site aimed at showing the world, particularly the world's sovereign wealth funds, why Bitcoin mining is the world's #1 ESG asset.

Because of that, I was able to put that project up on https://geyser.fund, which is an incredible site if you haven't checked it out by the way.

Because of that, yes it generated more sats that's given my some more time bandwidth to create a team working on the project.

But more importantly the interest of a potential sponsor who loved the idea of orange-pilling the world's ESG investment committees at Sovereign Wealth Funds, because the ROI of doing so is so big for everyone who owns Bitcoin It's fair to say, the experiment seems to be working.

Having a paid newsletter also allowed me to dedicate more time to deep research, like the current edition, which revealed that Bitcoin mining was never banned in China.

The punchline is, sometimes free is the right model (like putting out high quality content on Nostr for free), and equally sometimes you can serve more people and more causes by charging.

There is no one rule.

But as long as you are maximizing for "what maximizes the success of people and the mission" you'll find the right model.

It's a lesson that's taken me a while to learn!