The time burn<\/strong><\/p>\nLet\u2019s look at another example.<\/p>\n
I was told about a social network that other startup entrepreneurs are using as a source of market research and populated by an active community. The caveat is that the members are very anti-marketing. If they feel you\u2019re out to game the system, they\u2019ll downvote your stuff and kick you out.<\/p>\n
I am new to this network, so I read their entry on Wikipedia and found about 20+ writeups about them on Google News.<\/p>\n
As I was going through the information, some of which dated back to 2012, I found that some of the stuff contradicted each other.<\/p>\n
Maybe some of the content was superceded by updates. Maybe some authors were more authoritative (ie: knew what they were talking\/writing about) than the others. It was sometimes hard to figure out who was giving good advice and who was talking out of their butt.<\/p>\n
Unless I was going to spend time to go through each item, verify the author\u2019s credibility and check the background\/validity of what they were saying, I would not be able to resolve the inconsistencies.<\/p>\n
So while this stuff is free, it is probably great for some, if you are willing to \u201cpay\u201d in time to filter the gems from the trash.<\/p>\n
From my perspective, since I can\u2019t use it in its raw form without \u201cfixing\u201d it, it\u2019s not good. Not good at all.<\/p>\n
\u2013<\/p>\n
Why pay more?<\/strong><\/p>\nSo back to the Lean Startup stuff.<\/p>\n
I gladly paid because I wanted to understand the stuff and find actionable strategies to use.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to spend days going through the material then figuring out applications for the model that Eric Ries had outlined.<\/p>\n
There were other options too. I could have enrolled in a coaching program\/mastermind that cost between $2,000 and $5,000.<\/p>\n
I procrastinated about buying in to that.<\/p>\n
Besides the money, it would have required quite a bit of commitment in time.<\/p>\n
So the program I eventually signed up for, which is self-paced and decently-priced (I don\u2019t have any intention to be startup-certified), made the most sense.<\/p>\n
\u2013<\/p>\n
If the shoe fits<\/strong><\/p>\nSo back to the original question.<\/p>\n
There is a lot of free stuff online, probably millions of pages related to whatever you\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n
Even if it is free of cost, it is not \u201cfree of time\u201d. If you have to spend hours looking and narrowing down stuff to what you need, then spend more hours testing and seeing which works for you, you will probably end up sending a lot of time on this. Your time has a value. Take your hourly rate (based on your opportunity cost) and multiply it by the number of hours you would spend.<\/p>\n
Even if your time is valued at a conservative $10\/hour and you spend 10 hours figuring out how to uploading a video to YouTube, insert annotations and optimize it for visibility, you would have \u201cspent\u201d $100 ($10\/hour x 10 hours) on this.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s an ebook which costs $10-20 to teach me this, you can bet that I would buy it.<\/p>\n
If you want to get the optimal results in what you do, it\u2019s important to use your money wisely AND use your time wisely too.<\/p>\n
Of the two, money can be earned and spent easily, but time only flows in one direction (forward) and we all have a finite amount of that (ie: we die one day).<\/p>\n
\u2013<\/p>\n
Having said all this, that\u2019s one of the reasons why I embarked on my life hacking project.<\/p>\n
If I can help you become faster, stronger and better at what you are doing and in the future things you plan to do, then why wouldn\u2019t you want to invest in yourself?<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t yet, be sure to check out \u201cHow I will make you faster and stronger. Or I will pay you $50<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\nGo ahead and read it.<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t take much time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hear this often and get into these conversations, sometimes multiple times each day. \u201cIf everything is available free on the Internet, why would anyone pay for stuff they can find for free?\u201d. I often hear this from business owners and Internet marketers who\u2019re looking at doing a paid prod<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}