Tag Archives: profit

almost free

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The internet needs a makeover. I remember when I wanted to make a fun certificate or a personalized card, I could just do a Google search and find a free resource. Now when you do it, the top 10+ sites found in the search all require you to register, login, sign up, or sign in with Google or Facebook. Don’t worry, your first 30 days are free, or you’ll need to put your email in to get promotional spam sent to your inbox.

I get it. It costs money to run a website. I know, I pay to keep DavidTruss running and thanks to some affiliate links I’ve made about $35-$40 over the past 15 years. Add another $15 if you include royalties from my ebook, which I give away free everywhere except on Amazon where I couldn’t lower the price. This is my sarcastic way of saying that I don’t make any money off of my blogging and I actually have to pay to keep it running. That’s fine for me, I don’t do this for an income, but most websites need a flow of cash coming in to keep them going.

But no matter how you look at it, things on the internet have gotten a lot less free over the past decade. My blog’s Facebook page doesn’t make it onto most people’s stream because I don’t pay to boost the posts. Twitter, since it became X, has been all about seeing paid-for blue check profiles and my stream feels like it caters to ‘most popular or outlandish tweets’ rather than people I actually enjoy following. Even news sites are riddled with flashy advertising and gimmicky headlines to keep your eyes on those ads.

There needs to be a way to keep things ‘almost free’ on the internet, while not inundating us with attention seeking ads, or making us register and give away our email address to be spammed by promotional messages we don’t want. I think it will come. I think there will be an opportunity to choose between ads or micropayments. Read the kind of news you want or listen to a podcast for a penny. Like what you read/hear? Give a dime, or quarter, or even a dollar if you really like it.  There are already people donating this way on Live events on YouTube and Twitch and other similar sites, it just needs to get to the point where it’s happening on any web page. I’d rather pay a tiny bit than be inundated with ads. It’s coming, but not before it gets worse… we now have ads coming to Netflix and Prime. They want us to pay MORE to avoid them. The model is still about exploitation rather than building a fan base. Subscriptions will dominate for a while and so will models that upsell you to reduce the clutter… but eventually, eventually we will see the return of the ‘almost free’.

Price hikes and profits

I saw an article recently that said inflation has dropped to 4.2%, the lowest since August 2021. Yet our grocery bills are up 9.7%. What’s disturbing about this is that many grocery stores (or their parent companies) are reporting record profits. So are oil and gas companies while I’m paying $1.93 per litre of gas.

Some people can no longer afford their mortgage, others are being priced out of the market due to increases in mortgage rates, and yet companies are giving their shareholders huge returns. These price hikes we are seeing at this time are proof that the capitalist market ruled by profits is broken.

Shareholder good exceeds public good. Profits, not people matter. And those who can afford to be shareholders grow richer and richer while those who can’t afford the extra cash to invest suffer as their dollar is worth less and less… whether it’s mortgages or the price of eggs, what a dollar used to get you doesn’t go as far today as it did last year.

Got a 5% raise? That sounds great except food will still cost you more to buy than you had to pay last year, before your raise. In other words, your income is not growing as fast as your living expenses. And unless you are a shareholder getting great returns, that won’t change any time soon.

I don’t know how this changes? I just see a larger and larger gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the gap is widening. Is this sustainable? No. But what’s the solution?

Optimize not Maximize

Maximize your profits, grow your busy, success is just around the corner, and when you get around that corner greater success is just around the next corner. There is always more to get, more to gain, more to achieve.

But at what cost?

What is your time worth? What happens when you grow too big to feel like a community? Where does the next dollar come from: cheaper parts, lower cost labour, a drop in quality at greater than maximum production?

And again, what about your time? How many hours do you put in? How many hours when you are not working is your brain still focused on your ‘to do’ list, or on your work in general?

Getting bigger isn’t always getting better. Sometimes it’s smarter to optimize than to grow. Sometimes your current customers are more import than your next customers. Sometimes your time with family and friends should be the most important thing you focus on.

But these two things are not mutually exclusive. Optimization can help build your business, profits, and even a positive working environment… and improve your time management. A model of optimization helps you achieve more with less, and allows you to improve in more areas besides a focus only on getting bigger.

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What is the good life?

Five to Eight Percent

When I think about the modern company with shareholders, I can’t help but think that this system is designed to undermine ethical and environmental progress. There are companies laying off workers right now while providing shareholders huge dividends and returns. The system is flawed. These returns help drive the company stock price up at the expense of ethically growing the company… instead of helping workers keep their job and keep their wages fair in comparison to what shareholders get

What if companies promised shareholders a maximum of a 5%-8% return? Any company profits beyond that are invested back into the company, towards employees, and/or towards environmental or community initiatives. If this were the case, companies would still have the same commitment to meet shareholders targets, but those targets wouldn’t be based on greed. Instead they would be focussed on doing the most good.

I’m not an economist and don’t know all the ins and outs of how this would work? I don’t know what the magic return percentage should be? But I do know that the current model is based on greed and unsustainable growth. If companies capped shareholder returns at a safe investment amount, and promised to do good with what would have been more returns, I think there would still be a market for the stocks… And these companies could help make the world a better place.