Slashdot Mirror
Will Internet Users Pay for Content?
securitas writes "One of the most challenging business problems is trying to figure out how to make money on the Internet, especially with content. Louis Borders believes that Internet users will pay for online content and explains in an interview the how and why. He is founder of Borders Group, a $3.4 billion company that is the second-largest bookseller in the USA, as well as the billion-dollar online grocer and dotcom flameout, Webvan. Borders thinks he has found the answers and has just launched KeepMedia, an online newsstand subscription service. As someone who has had spectacular success and failure in his career, Borders' latest venture will be an interesting one to watch."
We are exceedingly cheap. We expect FREE on the internet. It's been burned into our heads since the dot com boom. At one point, "free" topped "sex" in web searches. We think if it's digitized and non-physical, we should have access to it and be able to copy it. We can't grasp the concept of monetary value for digital things. We can't wrap our brains around the idea that those digital things took work to create, and people that made them want to be paid for them. Since we can get it so quickly and easily over the internet, we just cant comprehend that.
If MS ever started selling Office exclusively as a download, they'd lose millions of dollars. Because Office just wouldn't feel like a real product to them. Put a CD in that consumers hand, though, and they're more willing to pay for it.
With the exception of Apple users, who will do whatever Stevie tells them to (buy music at the Apple Store! On your Ipod! Now!), most denizens of the internet are, let's be blunt, cheap bastards.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Quoting ESR:
If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say you are ``content'', but using it as a noun to describe written and other works of authorship is worth avoiding. That usage adopts a specific attitude towards those works: that they are an interchangeable commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it treats the works themselves with disrespect. Those who use this term are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors (``creators'', as they say) of the works. The term ``content'' reveals what they really feel.
As long as other people use the term ``content provider'', political dissidents can well call themselves ``malcontent providers''.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
But:
1) only once (unless it's cents - micropayments)
2) no DRM copy restrictions
3) open file formats
2 & 3 are essential for fair.
I only started buying DVDs when 2 & 3 were true (playable under Linux).
We've been accustomed to free content and will tend to avoid payment whenever possible. Most people (especially AOL users) will figure they've already paid and shouldn't have to do so again.
Salon Magazine has been forced to modify its subscription model in order to survive (if you call that surviving).
Perhaps one model that might work is a monthly credit from your ISP that will go to pay for initial usage of pay/view content.
Given how few people will even pay for Slashdot content, we're not likely to see this widely adopted anytime soon.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
As a /. subscriber I guess I'm proof positive they will pay.
But you are the wrong demographic. Most people could give a shit if they lost a site because it couldn't pay the bills (for slashdot, that would be me).
IMHO, people will never pay for content unless a system of micropayment is developed and *bundled* with their PC. For example, lets say that Microsoft packaged $10 of micropayment into their next OS... Users would have already paid for it so there would be no reason not to use it. So they would.
And then they would see the content that would be available in a pay-for world. If good enough, then I'm sure that there would be renewal. But you'd have to make that process easy, as well.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
"I love Amazon but I'd say 1 slightly successful company out of a thousand, probably doesn't make a good business model."
Amazon sells books, music etc on the internet. Like people have done with ads in magazines etc. They were/are cheap and convenient. Not a new business model.
Micropayments IS a new business model. I'm not a slashdot subscriber, as i wouldn't get anything (of value to me) extra for paying.
I think you are comparing apples and oranges. Slashdot is different from content provider like the one mentioned in the article. Content aggregator would be a better definition. People subscribe to show an appreciation of that service other than the fact that it is largely a channel of expression.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Hmm - Maybe you should log in as a non-subscribing user and check out the huge .NET ad in the middle of the page! Somebody sure seems to be making money from my browsing...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
You'll see people start paying for content, when distributers start pricing it correctly. Sometimes I only visit a site once, maybe twice. Do I want to buy a 20-50 dollar a month subscription to get the article I'm interested in? Obviously not.
However, I would be willing to make a 50 or 75 cent investment in a good article or two. Micropayments could be a huge boon to the net. Paypal or Visa or Mastercard ought to get their act(s) together and make it happen already
Just because you pay for one site that you likely sit on all day, doesn't mean Internet users in general will stand for being nickle-and-dimed to death by every site they visit only a few times per week/month.
The pay-for-no-ads/extra-feature model seems to be the best that they can hope for, IMO. If the content isn't spectacularly unique, people will go elsewhere. The idea is to get 'em hooked on free content, then probe for a few bucks for some extra features.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
I know its music, but apple gets poeple to pay for music. Wall street journal gets people to pay for there services as does bloomberg. Information is valuable. There is no easy way to pay for web pages if you want a little at a time.
Its like newspapers. In boston we have a "Free" daily paper (The Metro) its small but has the days news. The "pay" Boston Globe is much bigger with more depth.
There is a place for both.
I have to disagree with you. The reason is people will pay for content if it's worth it. People pay for dating and meeting sites all the time, and I heard ESPN Insider does well. The problem is people don't want subscriptions. If I see an article I want to read, then I should be able to buy that article, and not a months worth for $9.95 or whatever. In the long run people will pay for quality sites, that are well run, well moderated, and deliver interesting content.
and people generally don't pay. We tried it as a last resort before shutting our site down awhile ago. The only way that worked for us to make money was to syndicate our content onto other web sites. We did pretty good business until the .com bust killed that. Another avenue we pursued was advertising but we didn't have many people on staff and chasing ad dollars (at the time anyways) was a full-time salesman's job. We were all techies. Needless to say, we didn't get many ad contracts. We also tried joining "networks" (think Home and Garden "Channel" on something like MSN)and that was a nightmare. Obviously, we weren't very good businessmen either but it was fun for awhile. People just don't expect to pay on the internet, there's simply too much free stuff.
We built a site for the New York Review of Books years ago with an online subscription model and it's been very successful.
The key -- that some folk seem to miss -- is that you need content that people are willing to pay to access. All too often the content provided by a subscription site isn't worth the price even if it was free. It also helps if your publication's demographic actually has money.
It's like television, which survives off ads. The only problem is we've learned that advertising on the net doesn't work very well. I think with clever, amusing, and less annoying ads, that could change. Also, I think most people base the success of an ad on the number of click-throughs; this is not logical, especially if you have an ad similar in nature to a print ad, where a click-through is not necessary to gain your interest in the product/service.
The Internet is still pretty young, and the Web is even younger. In time, hopefully, things will flesh out and new business models will emerge. I think for now, though, the industry is still trying to recover from the burst tech bubble.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
But I won't give my credit card number to a thousand different sites. I will not subscribe to a bunch of sites (recurring payments or minimum payments greater than what I'll use on my visit), and I will not enter my personal information over and over and over again. And when it comes to downloadable books, software and music, I want that content downloadable forever, or the deal's off.
Until there's a standard for centralized payments (it's fine if there are multiple payment centers, so long as they all speak the same protocol), I'm going to use Google to hunt for alternate sites for information and entertainment.
Until downloadable content is as loss-proof as a book or a CD (meaning my library doesn't go away if a hard drive goes away without a backup or I run out of space and have to kill a folder of tunes I won't listen to for a few months), it doesn't feel like you actually own anything. If you have a permanent account with permanent access, you feel like you've purchased something, and it feels like your money's afforded you a little certainty. If you only get one, two or three downloads or a 30-day cap and then you're screwed, it's just as fulfilling (and often less trouble) for others to load up bittorrent and grab a few movies and CD images. The whole download-limited purchase thing seems really short-sighted.
If you post, you make the comments that make the pages that carry the ads. Even if you don't post, you read the ads and maybe click once in a while. You're not freeloading here if you don't pay.
...which I wish I could take credit for :)
I heard a guy speak about this a while ago. He is CEO for a large Australian portal site, and like all portals, is struggling to make money. His comment was that, as a general rule, people are more likely to pay for content that is user created, rather than content that someone else creates - bad news for traditional news sites!
Some examples: Hotmail premium services, dating sites, forums (see EZBoard), and yes, even slashdot.
Sure, most of those examples have many more people not paying, but the key thing is they are all getting people to pay money. Think about sites you pay for or might be tempted to pay for...
Read reviews of shopping cart software
- Same or similar, comparable, slightly lower quality content cannot be available elsewhere for free
- They have a meaningful value proposition (people will feel like they're getting what they're paying for)
- The economy (and their current income level) allows them to have the disposable income for it...as most online content is not vital to have
A prime example (although it's not "online") is HBO. I pay an extra $10/month for it because its content is (imho) that much better than the rest of what TV has to offer. If an online service can get people to feel the same way (that their content is that much better than the rest of what the Internet has to offer) no doubt people will pay.