As I watch my Facebook feeds I am captured by the number and variety of content where people are providing services for free. Aside from the fact that the content receives a monetary benefit, I ask myself what other reason(s) would they do this? I think about what niche could I do for free and why would I do it? Everything that I come up with is donned by justifiable cons to not do it. The main one being 'trust.'
Babysit my little 'uns. I would never charge for babysitting my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I sat one of them 3 days a week for eight months for free. The pleasure of their company is salary enough.
Concerning Facebook. Anything offered free on it is a scam in my book. I would like to give my advice for free instead of having to pay folks to take it.
We've provided free goods and services over the years but never talked about or advertised it. Like @Faye Fox, I don't trust people who do.
I've worked with non-profits, but those were formal organizations. And I've certainly helped a number of folks on my own. But I've never advertised it. I don't do FaceBook. Exactly what do people there do for "free"? And what monetary benefit do they receive?
Von said: "Aside from the fact that the content receives a monetary benefit, I ask myself what other reason(s) would they do this?" I wondered what she meant, and still wonder exactly what people are doing for free. I'll run your [endorsed] checks to the bank for you for free.
To answer @John Brunner's questions I watch some videos on Facebook from members who have Youtube channels and they create videos of everything. They are also members of Facebook and post their videos which are also content for Facebook as well. On each of these platforms when they supply a certain number of videos/content they get paid. What they do for free for example, a lawn care service will mow a lawn for free creating the video/content to post on Youtube and then on Facebook or an individual may do the same thing. These members can also have a Twitter, Instagram or whatever account as well creating videos/content. That's as plain of an explanation as I can get.
Thanks, Von. So it's mostly a business [purportedly] doing these things as promos. That makes more sense than some individual offering to do something on your property with no license, no references, etc. I could see doing that if I had a business. I mentioned somewhere here that a friend's son was contacted by Facebook to create vids that he would get paid for. He had already been posting videos, so I guess that's how they decided to reach out to him. I was told how much he got paid for a video when it hit 1,000,000 views, and I was shocked at how little money it was. I don't have a F.B. account, and the few times I've been on it have been to look up a business that uses FB rather than a web site. It's always been a frustrating experience, since I can't Log On to make the annoying banner go away.
I watch Bladez sometimes. He mows overgrown yards for free while filming it for his Youtube channel. With Youtube, you have to actually provide the content for free - as it is free for the people who watch and for those whose yards are mowed - but once they get a set number of viewers, the channel is monetized, which means that they get paid by Google/Youtube for the advertising on the channel, and some people are making very good livings off of that alone. Al, who does the Bladez channel, had his own lawnmowing and yard-care service, which was probably promoted through his channel, but I think he said that he was doing Youtube full-time now. As for doing things for free, I do things for free for people all the time. Not so much these days, of course, but, when I was making websites for a living, I created a couple of church sites for free and one for a Boy Scout troop.
Lately I have been checking on volunteer opportunities that I am able to do. In the past, I have worked at hospice home visits, delivering food to salvation army...but not sure about what I am up to now. You can look up volunteer ops in your town. Recently, I submitted an application to teach reading to adults and bought another copy of Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read, but was never contacted. Not sure the program is still going on.
I think that what Ken said is absolutely correct, and you can make good money from any kind of youtube video that people will want to watch. We all know that we can find tutorials on everything from baking a cake to fixing our car to planting a garden, and most of them start out with an ad for something. If it is a longer video, it is usually interrupted with even more ads. People in other countries can do really well because they get paid the same as someone in the US would get paid. A few years ago, I started watching videos about a baby monkey called “YoYo”, and you can see in the videos over the years that the family has changed houses several times as they earned money, and now live in a gorgeous home with a huge swimming pool, koi pond, amazing views, and the information about their finances said they were millionaires. I think they live in either Viet Nam or maybe Thailand. When they first started , they lived in a much smaller house, and didn’t even own a car; so they have done well with their Monkey YoYo videos.