I once rented a car for work and had an unpleasant experience. When I returned the car, I thought to myself, "I'm never renting from them again." After sitting on it for a day, I realized conducting my own silent protest wasn't going to help me or the rental agency. So later that day, I called their corporate headquarters and told my story to the VP of customer relations. More importantly, I told him what they did wrong and what kind of experience I expect as a customer if he wants my future business.I would like all the content creators reading this to view this post as though you are the car rental agency. I am a dissatisfied customer who may never buy from you again unless you get your act together. I normally wouldn't waste my time explaining all this, but the content creators on Step2 certainly seem to be going in the right direction so I'm hoping this information will help.
This post isn't my attempt at a debate. You won't hear any mention of theft versus copying, exposure versus lost sales or right versus wrong. All I want to do is give you real-life insight from the file-sharing world. I want to hold your hand and show you how I decide what to buy and what my motivation is to pirate. I will use the terms pirate, download and file-sharing interchangeably throughout this post but they all mean the same thing: to download your content for free.
Some people will read this and think, "I don't care what this guy says, internet piracy is damaging." For those people, I ask you to skip the rest of this post and jump to the bottom section titled, 'In Closing.'
Some of you won't read this entire post and it won't hurt my feelings. You won't understand your customers and we won't buy your content. And don't read this hoping to find out why people download your content in the hopes that you can stop it in the future. You cannot stop file-sharing. It would be like trying to stop people from using electricity. People who have already paid for your content will also be some of the ones who download it. And they'll share it with others.
by Bobbi Smith, Step2 Insight Community | Read more:
Illustration via: Salon
