There was a saying that parents told their daughters back when I was a kid.  Nobody wants to buy the cow if you give the milk away for free.  Whether this is still advice commonly passed down is unclear, although I never told this to my daughter.  Have a good time was always what I said, knowing that she never pushed the envelope despite my admonitions.  Where did I go wrong?

But Seth Godin, of the marketing Godins, offers a troubling observation.  First, history:

How about giving it away to help the idea spread?

The simplest old school examples are radio (songs to hear for free, in in the hope that someone will buy them) and Oprah (give away all the secrets in your book in the hope that many will buy.)

There’s a line out the door of people eager to spread their ideas, because in a crowded marketplace, being ignored is the same as failure.

Sound familiar?  Think Avvo Answers and the plethora of faux lawyer advice websites where people ask stupid questions and lawyers who have nothing to do all day give stupid answers, in the hope that someone will be overwhelmed with their sincerity and brilliance and deeply desire to pay them money. 

But just because it worked in the past doesn’t mean the dynamic remains the same.

As the free-only cohort grows, people start to feel foolish when they pay for something when the free substitute is easily available and perhaps more convenient.

There’s a growing disconnect between making something worthwhile and getting paid for it. The digital artifact is heading toward free faster and faster, and the inevitable leap to a paid version of the same item is going to get more difficult.

Creators don’t have to like it, but free culture is here and it’s getting more pervasive. The brutal economics of discovery combined with no marginal cost create a relentless path toward free, which deepens the gap. Going forward, many things that can be free, will be.

The point, brothers and sisters at the bar, is that those who give it away for free are winning, but more so than they hoped.  The culture of free has been empowered beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.  Sure, you know that your free advice is worthless; far too superficial, if even close to accurate, to be of any use whatsoever. 

But the people who want it for free don’t know this.  They think they scored, got your high-priced opinion just for asking.  You told them, no need to pay me for my thoughts, as I’m just the most sensitive, wonderful lawyer on the internet and will be more than happy to give it away.

See the graphic?  See that big, blue circle that says “free?”  See that little, orange circle that says “pay?” See that white space in between the two?  Just like shake and bake, you helped.

It’s not that you devalued yourself by creating an online presence that says, “I’m a lawyer who believes his advice to be so worthless that you need not pay for it.”  You’ve devalued all of us.  You are the reason I get a dozen phone calls a day asking if I do pro bono, 18B or CJA.  You are the reason they tell me, “but I just want to ask a question,” and expect me to sit on the phone with them for an hour to answer it. 

Yes, I can hear your crying.  “But if it’s wrong to inflate my credentials, strut in front of the courthouse in pink hotpants or give away worthless advice for free, how will I ever get a BMW?”  So sad.  There are answers to your questions, but you aren’t going to like them.  They involve hard work and sacrifice.  They aren’t guaranteed to produce prestige or wealth.  They won’t get you a BMW by the end of the week.

Despite my inability to satisfy your desire for a magic bullet to make your phone ring off the hook with paying clients, the point remains that giving it away for free isn’t the answer.  Worse still, it may spell the death of any chance you have for a career that produces sufficient revenue to rent an apartment and finally get out of your parents’ basement.  And it’s not doing much to help the rest of us either.

Reconsider your choices.  Value your advice.  If you can’t or don’t, then either work harder to offer better advice so that it’s worthy of a fee, or something else to do during the day when there’s no soap opera to watch.  They won’t be around for much longer anyway.

Whatever you do, however, understand that you aren’t building a practice and reputation by becoming a Level 29 Contributor to Avvo Answers.  You are becoming a cow.