Slashdot Mirror
End of the Free Internet
efedora writes: "The End of Free keeps a list of the various transitions to paid services from free net sites. The list is getting longer. When I think of an individual site that's really worthwhile I say to myself, "Sure, that site is worth $4.95 a month". The problem is there are going to be lots of sites at $$$ a month and it sure adds up." Of course even Slashdot is planning on rolling out subscriptions-for-no-banner-ads sometime soon, so I suppose we're not entirely immune to the subscription bug either.
this is the first i've heard of this and this is the dumbest thing Slashdot can do. No one will pay. I don't care about the banner ads at the top. I ignore them anyway. Have you done any market research to back this up? Is there an official announcement that I missed?
Get in touch with reality. Jesus.
I suspect we'll eventually see editorial services that combine a large group of websites under one payment plan. For example, slashdot would have a hard time going pay, but, say if all andover's websites went to a subscrption, costing $2/month for unlimited access for everhting, they would probably fill a few pockets.
Also, I'll bet money that after people begin feeling comfortable with paying for content, the ads will come back. It's just the nature of the beast.
The Internet is generally stupid
I've said before that I wouldn't mind paying for a Slashdot subscription, but I have a few reasonable (in my opinion) requests that would probably have to be fulfilled if I were to pay around $60 a year (assuming ~ $5.00 for monthly access):
- You can keep Katz. I don't hate the guy as much as most people around here. He's not a moron, and he writes interesting articles. BUT, please ask Robert Cringely to write an article or two every month. I'm not sure if this would violate his contract with PBS, but he would be a nice addition to the Slashdot staff (perhaps he could even write an open-source/free software slanted column in addition to his PBS gig).
- No banner ads for subscribers, of course.
- Some "free" item every six or twelve months, perhaps. I'm talking small here, like a travel coffee mug of a relatively aesthetically-pleasing t-shirt with a slash and a dot on it.
- Ability for more customization than non-paying users. I'm thinking of some nifty themes, perhaps (everyone loves the apple./..org gfx, let's get some more good looking stuff). Also, subscribers should be able to moderate more often. I probably earn at least five karma points a day on my two accounts but haven't been able to moderate for MONTHS.
- Perhaps a general forum with a few different categories where subscribers can post questions, etc. I'm imagining an "Off-Topic" room, a "General hardware" room, and a "Software" room right now. Of course, this would all be OSS/FS-related chit chat for the most part (except for silly OT posts).
Eric Krout
Soon End of Free will start charging users to see the list of free net sites transitioning to paid services.
It seems like the latest trend in 'net advertising is larger, flashier banner ads. When are the advertisers going to get the idea that THIS DOES NOT WORK! Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders, "Intersicials" (between page ads), Ads that make noise, Ads that flash and blink. It's all just detracting from the real message of th ad. Look at Google. Reports say that they may be profitable, and most of their revenue comes from... guess what... ads! But when do you see an ad on Google? No pop-ups, no banners, just "Sponsored Links". Non-intrusive and relevent to your search. Bigger banners don't get more clickthroughs. Learning what the user wants and targeting banners to them does (Yes, there are privacy concerns - but you don't have to track users to find out what they may be interested in.). The solution is to cut costs and make banners less annoying - and more informative. Instead of poorly done marketing, how about a simple link. Imagine this at the top of Slashdot: "P4 2.2, 1024mb DDR, 120gb HDD, 17" TFT, DVD-RW, Radeon 8500 - $1600 from X Computers". This is targeted. Most people wouldn't understand what this says - but I bet that 95% of the /. crowd would. Advertising is about getting the message accross to the righ people and giving people what they want. A P4 2.2 with a TFT and DVD-RW for $1600? Who wouldn't click? It's a good offer that makes you want to learn more. It's advertising that works.
Ok so banner advertising with the cpm / click through model is failing... so we need to find other sources of income so now we charge a fee to our user base for them to browse our wonderful site without the banners.
... Oh right, no one sees them..."
/. for instance has almost entirely OSDN banners. I would never pay to remove these, I like the OSDN sites and love the thinkgeek banners. So how exactly would this model bring people to subscribe?
Somewhere else in the office someone says... "Why is our banner model not working again?
But really, that model stopped working a while ago so now most sites run "house" banners, advertising partner sites and various sections / products within their own sites.
The good thing is that there will always be some free amateur sites worthy of attention.
The bad thing is that bandwidth isn't free. When amateur sites are good, they get popular, and their bandwidth cost increases without bound.
The solution. It'd be nice if the bandwidth costs were paid by users. We already pay money to our ISPs. In an ideal world this money should pay for the bandwidth costs of the http requests that we send *and* the contents that we receive in return. Fan sites would no longer fear the bandwidth costs of the slashdot effect. They would only have to worry about the server not crashing. And for that we have prayers.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and explain why I'd be willing to cough up some cash for a Slashdot subscription.
/. because it points me to a lot of interesting news stories, and because it also provides a lot of different opinions on said news stories. Stories that I would probably miss if I didn't read the site. Some people seem to come here expecting a grand bastion of journalism, but they're definitely looking in the wrong place.
/. provides me with a magazine-like service, I'd be willing to pay a magazine-like subscription fee. Something like $10/month would be too much, but I would seriously consider something in the neighborhood of $20-$25 per year, which is what I am used to paying for magazines.
My view is this: It's like subscribing to a magazine. Except the magazine is updated very frequently and covers a much broader spectrum of news than any print magazine.
Yes, it's not perfect. Sometimes I don't agree with what editor X says, or what comment Y says, or what comment Y is moderated as, but it's the same as any other aspect of life: there are good and bad parts. It's an imperfect system, but I like it anyway.
I like
Since
Anyway, that's just my ignorant, pigheaded opinion. I do suppose it's a wee bit off-topic but I figure that a lot of posts on this thread will be talking about this very issue.
What is needed is a subscription network. As many will no doubt point out, paying $5/mo to a bunch of sites adds up.
There needs to be a network. Users who want to subscribe to sites can go into the network and click a checkbox for all the sites they want, at a low price per site (more along the lines of $1/mo or something.) Then the total charge is added up and run through their CC once. This would help reduce credit card and processing charges for the individual sites; they'd just get a check every month from the network for all their subscribers.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Going through The End of Free, I found one site, Netsurfer, that posted a pretty good explanation of why they were shifting to a subscription model.
To recap my understanding of the issue, regular print periodicals are either completely paid for by users (mostly books, and your more distinquished journals), or by a combination of user fees and ad fees (most magazines and newspapers). A few periodicals get by purely on advertising (Village Voice, for instance)
It should be noted that in the mixed fee case, advertising provides the vast majority of revenue. Subscription fees pretty much are just used as a signal to advertisers that people are actually reading, and therefore willing to pay for, a magazine.
Since online pubs can completely verify readership, the signalling aspect of subscrber fees should have been rendered unnecessary. Also, since distribution of online content is cheaper than regular paper pubs by several orders of magnitude (though certainly not free, as was once touted), online pubs were thought to have an advantage over offline pubs in that regard.
Somewhere along the line, this new paradigm has, at least temporarily collapsed. I suspect a lot of it has to do with poor understanding of market forces and implemantation rather than the ultimate unfeasability of ad-supported, free online content.
evanchik.net
I wouldn't pay $4.95/month to have ads removed from slashdot.
...but I would put a $5 bill down CowboyNeal's g-string in exchange for a lapdance.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
What these sites that want to charge for content fail to realize is that (as others have mentioned), it all adds up. I'm already appalled at my "communications bill" every month. $70 for DirectTV. $90 for telco/ADSL. $150 for two cellular phones. $99/yr for Tivo. Luckily, I don't have a pager, or that'd be another $7 a month.
We're getting nickle and dimed to death on all the stuff, and after a while, people are going to stop being willing and/or able to pay. *I'm* not paying $4.95 a month. And in SlashDots case, unless the ads suddenly start taking the whole screen, I don't even notice them. Some sites are in my firewall database so I never see the content anyway.
And incidently, how effective are these ads? It appears that ThinkGeek advertises a lot, but I never click through to them. I can probably count the number of ads I've clicked through on.
Now, for one time fees, like Opera, it's worth paying the $$$ to get rid of the ads. THOSE types of ads use screen space you can't get rid of, since it's integrated into the browser. For SlashDot type ads, they scroll right off the screen.
So does SD really think anyone will pay $4.95 for ad free, *other* than as a method to support the site (ie, they'd pay anyway, but this way they feel like they're getting something for their money?)
And speaking of nickles and dimes, anyone check their phone bill recently? New charge: Infra Structure Upgrade for disasters. Greaaat. And I'm not even done grousing about paying for 911 service on a line that I never (in fact, can't) make a voice call from.
--John (running out of nickles and dimes)
Take a look over at arstechnica. They are trying some interesting things to keep the site free.
./ is happens to be discussion, but maybe there could be more... Anyway something to think about before just throwing up the ads while hoping readers can deal with them.
Basically what they have done is package some of their content and index it in a way that is worth some money each year.
The casual browser can still stop by and catch the news or discussion, but the interested user can subscribe and get nicely made PDF's of various articles and other things.
So much of what
I find it hard to believe that all the brains concentrated on this site a couple times a day that we cannot come up with something worth paying for.
Whadda think?
Blogging because I can...
- Purchasable karma - for a small additional fee, of course
...
- VIP chat with (insert your most-loved Slashdot editor here)
- Voting-out of (insert your most-hated Slashdot editor here)
- Priority consideration in the story-submission queue
- Higher rankings in comment submission
Suggest a few of your own! (I've kept my ideas non-obscene, since this is just meant in good fun).Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
The way Downside views this data, it's not when the company dies, it's when the stockholders die. And they're already dead; the stock is down 99% (yes, 99%) from its peak. There are ways a company out of cash can continue to operate, (dilute, take on debt, sell off assets) but they're all terrible for the stockholders.
Charging for Slashdot looks like a last-ditch effort to give that asset some value for resale.
The problem with free sites is that the economy of the internet isn't currently capable of handling them. If we look at a parallel to normal society, the content sites would be like TV and radio stations and the ecommerce sites woudl be like the brick & morter retail and wholesale stores. Typically, brick&morter pay advertising fees that fund the media. However, on the internet, this is skewed. There is a far greater ratio of sites dedicated to content than ecommerce sites that find it profitable to advertise on the media sites. Many successful ecommerce sites advertise on more conventional radio and TV formats as they get better response than from banner ads which the bulk of the users of the internet have chosen to ignore or block out completely.
I have chosen to avoid ads alltogether on my site. If I get to the point that I need revenue to fund my site, I'll sell products from within to fund the bandwidth. Sure, I wouldn't get THAT many sales if the purpose of my site isn't to promote the products but rather content, but any sales are 100% mine I'm not feeding off pennies from banner ads purchased by other companies.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Contrary to your belief that net is composed of well educated people who see pressure and are not subdued by it, you are wrong. Advertisements DO work, like spam, capturing small population slice.
This is unfortunate, and i think most major providers must attempt to block such nonsense.
I do not mind unobtrusive ads, like on google, that actually flow along with your query, and sometimes help find extra information!
I think barrier will be broken once ads will offer something to user in exchange for paying attention to it. Have you seen shoot, zap smash the monkey ads?(duh!) Well that ad provides entertainment for web user that surfs very rigid content.
Ad that offers something to the user, may catch attention of one , pass the threshold of filtering and annoyance ad dismissal, may bring magnitude large set of audience than otherwise large square pop up ads about sun and oracle bits they are willing to sell for a small fortune.
Ad must say, here is something free, that you might need, in return of taking it(enteratinment, info), learn about our product and maybe have a deal.
As for websites turning to subscription models, they have clearly have not grasped what the net, is. Perhaps they will capture some people who transalete from newspaper world into webworld, but those are not the futre of the net.
New media distribution models will be coming to lower the cost of distribution, such as multicast(I assume with IPv6, cuz one for IPv4 is dead). Once that is everywhere, one may be able to cast from garage to everyone in the world, and take exactly 1 times bandwiths, as unicasting to a buddy. Leveraging smart ways of technology is what internet is all about. Its about being able to take new stuff, maybe make your own and do one man show that will make drone megacorporations silly.
If you do that though, you might fall under many laws promoted by corporations into power, that attempt to raise barrier to market entry trying to cut out joes with super cool ideas that can embarrass their multimillion IT departments, with flick of a finger, few key strokes and some ingenuity.
Fuck isn't it whats all america was all about, not a pathetic piece of (s.h*i-t), manned by mighty dollar and interest for profit. Not even a human being! But I digress.
For example, slashdot would have a hard time going pay, but, say if all andover's websites went to a subscrption, costing $2/month for unlimited access for everhting
I think this is a good thing. It would require us to have a REAL revenue stream without having to rely on VC. People have to get used to the fact that someone needs to pay for the bills.
With Reptile we are going to integrate payment systems (paypal, merchant, etc) so that you can subscribe to content based on reputation..
This way you can subscibe to your favorite sites like slashdot or kuro5hin and and at the same time get access to a very high rated Salon article.
Of course a lot of this is still under development but we would love to get your help!
I'd like to see that poll
/. -
Would you pay for
Yes, I am addicted
Yes, I feel we should support the developers
Yes, Get rid of the commercializism
Maybe
No, information should be free
No, I don't pay for anything on the net
No, I'm paranoid about giving my credit card to CowboyNeal
One key is to charge people as indirectly as possible. Some other ideas:
pay for more bandwidth
micro ads (mentioned below)
personalization: xxx@slashdot.org email, rdf headlines sent to your pda.
pay for more functionality: message your friends. A more customizable moderation system: ignore the mods of your foes/ ignore "offtopic" mods, etc.
subtract free functionality but only for the hardcore users. I.e. best set up is if the average user didn't notice a big difference (no huge page filling iframes). Say the typical user could only post 15 comments a month. Then you'd have to pay {small amount} for unlimited postings. Note that by logging in as AC this still lets the po' folk post, but it's targetted at the hard core guys who are more likely to pay.
How these changes are done is often as important as what the changes are:
I think this would be a good "Ask Slashdot" topic. Seriously. Why not lay out the finances, what's needed and how soon, and then let's bandy about some ways to make a subscription site like this work. Why do it behind closed doors? You might find some pretty clever ideas from the user base. Aslo, I for one, would have great respect for any company that honestly dealt with its users and included them in the decision making process. Or at least made some gestures in this direction. It would bring you so much goodwill. And we know you gotta pay the bills (little taquitos might loom on horizon. Somebody has to feed Katz.). But instead of making us feel like we are being led by the nose to a more and more annoying site until we pay (i.e. the Salon approach) -- be upfront about what's needed and we'll help you make slashdot work.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Indeed. It already happens in other environments.
My wife occasionally manages to drag me out to a movie (or I go otherwise willingly on the rare occasion when there's one that seems worth going to). I tend to have her pay for the tickets to avoid the sinking feeling as the majority of a $20 bill disappears in to the vortex that is the box office (and we haven't even come near to the snack bar yet).
But what the heck. I eventually get a comfortable stadium-style seat in a nice theatre with a good screen and decent sound. I'm all set to watch the movie. And, of course, I might get a chance to see the trialer of another movie I'm looking forward to. Or I might have to suffer a string of Hollywood drivel and note what I may (or most likely) not rent if I'm really hard pressed for a movie at home. But what do I get?
20 minutes of commercials. Not movie trailers. Commercials. For soda. Cars. Washing detergent. You'd almost think I'm home watching television. Except I paid a premium price for the privilege.
Come on guys. Nothing is ever free. There is always a cost. Whether it's a financial cost, opportunity cost, or others, in the end, someone has to pay for it. We have to realize that the last couple of years has been a fluke in the whole economic cycle. There is no possible way that that cycle could have continued.
What I see is that (and it has already started happening in the last year or so) all these little web sites will be bought up by a conglomerate and mergered together. The economics of this is quite smart. I mean, it's not really economical for one small company to have a 10K server and a 1k/month internet connection. If 10 of these sites have been merged together, they would come to 1/10 (maybe a little more) of the original cost. Examples of this are seen here at Slashdot, eVite by Excite, and others.
Even then, these conglomerates will still not be able to afford to make a decent profit (I mean, that's what companies are there for..making money) So they might in the end look towards a pay for content plan. So it becomes, people will only pay for content that they care about or are interested in. Content that they read frequently. In the end, it becomes a choice for the consumers where demand sets the price.
Now for the point of this post. I would gladly pay $2-5 (approximately the price of a newstand magazine) for access to quality content. I would definitely pay that much for access to read articles and post on slashdot. In addition, this would be a great raise the quality of the content (ie posting).
Also, a number of people have posted about using ad-blocker programs. In the end, those programs are only hurting yourself and everyone else on the internet. Company need the small amount of money coming from these advertisers to barely stay afloat. These programs only go to convince the advertisers to pay significantly less for the ads because less and less people are viewing the ads. Think about it this way, would advertisers pay millions of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl if they found out that there was a technology that a good population of TV watchers are using to block the super bowl ads?
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Why go to a website if you're only reading their content and using up their bandwidth and server if you are not willing to pay for it even indirectly? This is quite like going into a magazine store to read the magazines but not buying it. It is not illegal per se. But it is also hurting the service that you use.
Once these companies go bankrupt, AOL/TW will buy up all content services and put it only accessible within their framework. What would your WebWasher do for you then? Would you be more willing to pay a couple dollars a month for the service now or 21.95 for an AOL/TW account?
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
If /. stars a subs service, you're not paying for the information, you're paying to support their continued ability to deliver you with responses to your http get requests. That is a service, and services cost money. Ample evidence of the aforementioned to be found in their net losses.
/. should charge, it's how their revenue model should look.
/. should be approaching this one, though I do have an excellent suggestion to make.
And since they already do respond to your http get requests, you can safely assume they pay for the ability. This simply means what we've al known for so long but have conveniently ignored for maybe the last decade:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
It's no longer a question of whether
I agree that the technique adopted over at arstechnica seems interesting, but I'm not sure how successful it will be.
Honestly, I have no idea how
/. has unfettered access to the best minds out there currently; use them. Start an 'Ask Slashdot' thread to come up with an appropriate revenue model, then use a poll to evaluate the most likely alternatives.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
AvantGo is weeding out what they call "Custom channel abuse". Basically its 8 or more people creating a custom channel to a site that doesn't pay up for a licence. See the Register article here and the AvantGo announcement here.
This means that things like Slashdots own palm friendly version and my AvantSlash (along with thousands of other non-profit making sites who provide an ability to view their content for free) are going to be left a little out in the cold.
I've been recommended Plucker for the Palm and Mazingo for the PPC - not tried either though.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I've finally come to a revelation about banner ads.... of course I came to this conclusion a while ago, but have yet to say anything here:
Banner ads, the idea behind them, does work. The problem is that people have come to the decision that they will only pay for banner ads that are quantifiable... I.E. Click Throughs.
This is not, and should not be the case. Banner ads should be sold on the number or visits on a site, and the popularity of the site.
Just like advertisers want to be seen during superbowl.... Why? Many, many eyeballs. So their willing to pay a hefty price!
I don't see a comercial during the superbowl and go... "Whoa... I gotta have that!" and then leave to go to the store.... NO! I finish watching the superbowl and then at a later date, with the proverbial commercial seed planted in my brain, I go and purchase that product.
The same goes for banner ads. It's a form of advertisement. I'm not going to drop everything to go and head over to that site..... I'm here at slashdot or where-ever for a reason. I'll do what I have to, and then later.... When I'm not too busy.... I'll head over to thinkgeek and buy that hat.
Yes I purchased many a thing at ThinkGeek and elsewhere, because of banner-ads (I would not have known about them otherwise) but I have NEVER purchased anything by means of a click-through.
So in quantifiable means, the banner ad didn't work. There was a click through but no purchase.
Ah, but I did purchase. Just at a later date.
I can't stress this fact enough.... We do not drop everything when we see a tv ad and head to the store... we do it later. Does this mean because we didn't drop anything that TV ads are failing?
Time for a philosophy change.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Maybe we can get back to the good old days when most of the net was free. Seems I remember a time that every site wasn't about making money, but was about someone who had an interest is some particular subject. Almost every ISP offers personal space these days, many up to 20MB. Some people run commercial websites on them but most are still put together by people who want to say something rather than sell something.
I think our perspective has changed as these sites still exist, and there is still a kind of "undernet" out there, that is often ignored by the search engines (free pages), or are simply not linked to by the "mainstream" net sites because they offer no opportunity to make a buck. It's still a neat place to spend an evening surfing around, just for the sake of surfing.
You know, I actually kind of like those ThinkGeek ads common at the top of Slashdot. Sometimes I even click on them to learn more about the product. ThinkGeek has some really innovative ads.
([x] feet up, in freezing temperatures with wind... and rain. Hey, can I get a light? Sure can. ThinkGeek Delta Shockproof lighters!)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
When I decide if a site is worth a few bucks a month, it's usually not because it will get rid of banners or put a star by my name or give some other minor feature... it's because I like the site and want to keep it around.
Slashdot would be one of those. No banner ads is worth $0.00 a month to me.. I ignore them anyway. But if my few dollars a month helps keep it around and running well, THAT is worth it.
/. works by linking to other sites, and whilst paying $2/mo for /. isn't the worst thing in the world, i'd soon find i couldn't read half the stories.
Forget the ny times and it's free registration problems - we'd have to pay out for another subscription for every other link!
You can get a decent site with Perl/PHP and MySQL support for around $10 a month with enough space and bandwidth for a medium sized site if you keep things like graphics at a minimum. Programming a site is easy and there are even free packages available for most common types of sites for those that aren't good programmers. I think you'll find that as many of the big free sites turn to pay or die that more small sites will show up.
:)
If you remember a few years ago there were lots of small free sites that eventually got ate by the big portal sites or just gave up as they couldn't compete for users attention with so many big name companies giving away the same stuff. Those forces are disappearing so now is your chance to have your own little slice of the Net again.
On my projects page you can see that I'm beginning to work on providing easy to use plug-n-play style components to build sites from. If anyone cares to help please do. So far I've used this exact code in several commercial sites and it's working fine so I have no reason to think it won't work for free sites. You don't need to make a profit from a site if it's not costing you a lot of money.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Presumably if you're willing to pay for the site you're a semi-serious contributor and not somebody posting reams of crap. So an extra +1 posting bonus might be justified. Maybe only if your karma is above a base threshold (to avoid letting losers pay their way to higher-rated posts).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."