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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."
As a /. subscriber I guess I'm proof positive they will pay. Not only do people need to feel that they are actually getting something for the money they're paying, the price also has to be right.
/. being one of the largest content delivery systems on the net, I'd be curious to find out how much revenue they generate based upon subscribers alone.
With
Perhaps Taco or one of the other "powers that be" would like to weigh in on this issue?
Mike
Do you think the freeloader mentality on the Internet is ready for change?
.02
I think it's at the turn of the hockey stick, because it's at about 15 percent of the Web population that's paying for content right now--that's still a low number. Very soon, you'll see that the content that's left to be free is content that will not be trusted; content that has a bias. Just like when you pick up a magazine that's free, and you don't trust it.
Umm, I don't trust sites on the web that I have to pay for. The only sites that I see on the web that have pay-for content are porn sites and I would MUCH rather use free sites like sublimedirectory or thehun.com just to avoid paying for stupid content. At least when I know that it is free and I am disappointed it's fine.
Will you get cooperation from some of the big media conglomerates that already own a collection of big-brand magazines, such as AOL Time Warner and Conde Nast?
Oh, we don't have them at launch, but we're thrilled to have 140 titles. We've had a lot of meetings with them--extremely positive meetings--and I'm sure they'll come into the platform in short order.
You are thrilled to have 140 titles because no one is buying into your dotcom bullshit. If anyone is going to want to pay to read stuff online they are going to do it on that site only. Perusing the titles made me think, wow, this sucks hard. I will stick to news.google.com for now. At least I get free news that is basically interesting, and if it's not on the front page, I know I can quickly search for it.
I see the Googles of the world like the freeways, where you're going from one place to the next, and that's the place to go. They have a very viable business being the main artery across the Internet. Our approach is to be a walled garden, where we bring in this very high-quality content. As a consumer, you would certainly want to use the freeway and the walled garden for different needs.
I (and plenty of others, including NON-GEEKS) see Google as God of the Internet. If I want to find an article, I search google and it finds it fast (including newspapers, magazines on the web, etc). Why in the world would I want to search your index of pay-for stuff (and limited to 140 titles currently) when I can use google to search 140+ titles on a SINGLE TOPIC in seconds? This idea is going back to Library's and making you pay to use them. I don't think it's going to work.
I just think that Google has cornered the market on this type of crap long before this guy could. news.google.com provides what everyone needs for EVERY media type.
I will stick to free content thank you.
Just my worthless
Why doesn't someone go ask Salon if people will pay for content?
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
...but wasn't one of the original ideas behind the Internet and the World Wide Web the spread of knowledge?
Doesn't making people pay for ideas kind of make people not want to *have* ideas?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
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).
I believe Web Content is much like Music when it comes to "making money".
Bands rarely make cash by selling their CD, but often in side-offers like t-shirts, stickers, etc ("merch"), and ticket sales to shows.
Web artists/authors/etc, rarely make (enough) cash by selling memberships/content, but often on side-offers, like ads, merch, etc.
S
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.
I dont go to many sites that employ staff, I might drop a few quid to a site I really like that is struggling to pay hosting bills, but the best sites in life are free. Charge money, and I'll go elsewhere. I used to run a 2000 visits-a-day site back in 99, I did it for fun. One of the biggest sites I goto now is trektoday, with no paid-for staff. Once you start charging by the page, I'll think "Is this really worth it?", I'll stress over every click, doesnt matter if its 1 cent a page or 0.001 cents. Its akin to paying per minute, or byte, for internet access.
That's a very ambivalent way of phrasing "channeling thousands upon thousands of simultaneous connections to your website, reducing your servers to a pile of flaming wreckage".
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
About the only way that I think I would happily toss down a monthly $fee for online content would be to have the content shipped to me on a (monthly, quarterly, whatever) basis on cd as well as the access.
;)
HTML is small, dynamic content can be shoe-horned into static, and you can always look back on the good old days (think LWN on cd. or Wikipedia, relive your first p0st over and over again on Slashdot the 99-01 collection, whatever).
I think I would even pay a premium for such as service as well (20 bucks a year for online access, or, 40 and we ship you a quarterly cd as well!)
Myself, I see the net being a little too ephemeral to be chucking down cash for something you will never get to touch or keep a library of for your own use.
My 2 cents. Now, time to go read the article!
Every expensive product in human history that faced cheaper (free is just the extreme) competition has at one point resorted to insulting their customers by calling them cheapos. "Freeloader Mentality" is a very hollow word that describes the simple fact that people make many of their economic decisions in a surprisingly economic way: As long as major news sites are free (as in beer), people won't pay for yet another one that charges them. It's that simple and ist's called competition.Get used to it.
you can find this quote here, it appears to me that it is written by RMS.
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 USED to get all TV for free.
THEN we paid for cable - but that was ok because we got out boobs, 4 letter words, and gore... commercial free.
NOW we pay MORE for cable, get twice the commercials, and have to watch edited versions of many movies.
Go figure.
So to those who say we will never pay for content on the net... what are you watching tonight, and how much are you paying again?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If you're going to charge people for online only content, it's really got to be more that just what's available in print. Slashdot is not available in print and it is more than just news, it's an experience of discussion with a great deal of other like-minded people. I am part of a group that runs a successful non-porn (well maybe some) pay website. In talking to our members, the main reason people subscribe to our site and keep renewing their subscriptions is the experience, not just the content. The experience being the activity in the various message forms, the ability to rate and comment on every piece of content, the ability to parametrically search and access all content for the past 6 years (online publicaitons rarely offer that), the ability to see who's currently online, etc.
Sorry for the shameless plug, but it illustrates the point that you really can't charge for *just* content presented in the same way as print. I don't believe Salon executed successfully using this model, and I can't see how anyone else could either.
Just my 2 cents ...
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.
The problem with this model is that when the users start paying, the users start demanding. They demand better content and more of it. When the content is free nobody cares if it is excellent or crap, and they have no room to complain. Anyone remember The ROMP? They kept calling their user base free-loading wusses. Users liked their content, so they obliged. After about a month they had to call the entire operation quits because they simply could not keep their new flash content out on their release schedule, and it all collapsed around them. All that's left is the hype of a movie called "When Booty Calls" that is pretty much vaporware.
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.
...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.Yes, they will when they have to. When they start logging on to sites that just arn't there anymore.
;-).
Now, I'm not going to pay for general news today. I can get it at the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, LA Times etc. etc. etc. I'd pay if they all dissapeared, but they won't.
NYTimes is profitable. The Washington Post's website is it's only real national edition and too strategically important. Others are similarly situated almost all are heading towards profitability. The WSJ is pay only and profitable. Salon is... well it just doesn't die
But, you know what, I've put some bucks into political blogs I read to keep them moderately healthy. I'd hate to see them go and -- more importantly -- I'd pay a moderate fee if they went pay-per-view.
The New Republic went mostly pay-per-view a couple months back. It gave me the little push I needed to subscribe to the deadtree version, which gives access to articles online.
And I subscribe to ArsTech's forums, since I habitate there fairly often and I want to help keep that site alive.
Finally, I work at a company that publishes $1,000/year newsletters via the internet. (Granted its PDF, not HTML) It content and people certainly pay, even if it isn't the general public.
Yes, I'm ahead of the curve. I'm obviously willing to pay for pulp-based content as well, which many aren't even willing to do.
For those stuck in 2001, believing you are the only one who "get's it" that the 90s were irrational exuberence and everything dotcom was dumb: Get off your high horse. Everyone knows, even those in business and things are improving. Profits are being squeezed out--even in the crappy economic times.
The internet is just a different way to transmit information. There is nothing inherent about it that means people won't pay for entertainment and valuable information there.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
There are two general types of content that could be on the web: highly specialized content, and rather generic content. The highly specialized content (wsj analysis, medical papers, etc.) can be sold on the internet because users know there's no other place to get it for free. For the generic content, there are tons of websites that are willing to provide free content just so they have visitors. As long as someone is willing to undersell on content, it will remain free.
Free news sites are an understandable byproduct of this competition. Any news company could charge for access; after all, the information does take research and money to compile. But, since there are many news sites, and they're all competing for hits, they will continue to provide content for free as long as they can. Once you start charging, you'd better have a lot more to offer than just headlines and commentary.
My piss-poor website is funded out of my own pocket, and realistically, that's the way it should be.
I put up some banners for shirts and posters, but to date I have not had a single purchase. It really doesn't bother me too much. I realize that I'm making only a couple of hits a day, and as of late, have not been updating as often as I'd like to. Even so, I do not consider my site to be operating at a loss. My bandwidth is a fixed cost, which I pay anyway for net access. Any sales that I would make off commissions would be considered pure profit. The fact that I haven't made anything yet does not mean a loss.
Once more people can do this, and more bandwidth becomes cheaper, the big, pay-for-content websites will fall by the wayside. Anything that they put up will be mirrored in one form or another, new, fresh opinions with less business-centric morals will replace the need for 'organized content'.
Who wants the internet ordered for us anyways? I thought the whole point was that we were to sift through information and opinion and *gasp* make an informed decision!
I regularly post to Slashdot. I am essentially a micro-content provider to Slashdot. I have posted over 300 comments, many of them high Karma scorers. If I made, say, one cent per Karma point, then I would be about 3 dollars better off by now! Woohoo!"
Maybe a site like Slashdot could charge "micropayments" but rebate to it's users that have high moderation. This may have an effect on eliminating troll posts and encourage well thought out responses.
I pride myself in the high moderation I get here & substantial page views/responses I get elsewhere. I mainly use this site & other Mac Chat/Forums sites as a way to "micro-advertise" my website & my eBay auctions. I figure, if people think I say something interesting I must be selling something interesting ;)
Another take: If you actually sell something on eBay OR leave feedback for a transaction you are rebated or awarded a micropayment. This way, even eBay could CHARGE for content. Buy - you are deducted a micropayment - leave feedback - awarded/rebated a micropayment
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
So I took a look around the KeepMedia site. It seems you get access to ALL the magazines available for a pretty low price. And there's a huge list of magazines there.
I drilled a little deeper and notices, well, 90% of these magazines I have no interest in reading. There's a handful of titles that look pretty good but there's some serious gaps ... I didn't see enough newspapers or tech magazines that I'd like to see.
Finally, it dawned on me, this is not a good idea for me. I seriously doubt these articles have a lot of the PICTURES. It's not going to be as robust as a magazine. Lastly, what's the point of this, when I can just go to the library (as I do, maybe once a week) and just peruse the magazines there? Better selection, actual print copies.
This site basically is running against the problems with eBooks. In addition to paid content, we have the problems of, do people really want to read magazine-length content on a screen? Do people want portability? Do people really want to "own" content that's only online? At least these people got the price point right. But I think they're gonna have to think about some of these other issues, too.
It just seems like, when your business model is competing against the physical library, you got a hard road ahead of you...
I've been using Yahoo BillPay for over a year now at $7 a month, and I'd never, EVER go back to writing checks and mailing bills. In fact, I visit a mailbox once every 3 months because I now handle all business and correspondence online. I still have all these old 34 cent stamps to which I have to add a sheaf of 1 cent stamps in order to mail anything.
I also pay extra for Usenet access from a company that is dedicated to it. Gotta have those complete multi-part binaries, don't ya know. :) At least until the RIAA eventually goes there. :(
And I pay a little extra for an email/web space combo.
So I, personally, have no problem paying for services even thought I'm skeptical about paying for content. That's why I don't complain about advertising unless a page gives me more than one popup at a time. That's like two commercials playing at the same time on TV.
--- Ban humanity.
Yes, the current system is not suitable for payment.
The reason is that caching is optional and not under control of the user.
When you pay for content, using already paid and cached stuff or downloading again is much bigger difference than just a matter of time.
We need to enhance the browsers to enable micropayments.
While it's easy to find current news on the Web, finding old news (useful to put current stories in context) is almost impossible. Due to storage limits, most information providers don't keep a lot of old information. Yet, it's exactly this "old" information that is so useful in research. I, for one, would be glad to pay $5/month for a useable archive of information.
The question now is: does the KeepMedia content qualify as a useable archive of information? The magazines they have at the moment are actually promising. Aside from the trade journals (a great source of information for activists and other investigative types), there are some interesting magazines, including Mother Jones, one of the better muckraking magazines in the U.S.
I think I'll try the 7 day trial and see how much value I derive from what's available. If I wind up with the equivalent of 4-5 magazine subscriptions plus a library's worth of back issues of other material, this could be a bargain.
I like Borders bookstores, but this venture wouldn't get my investment money.
One thing that struck us is that the movie business (gets) two-thirds of their money from their archives, while magazines are getting zero. That's a huge pool of content that's not monetized at all.
By "archives" here does he mean DVDs, videotapes? I would think so, if it accounts for a 2/3 of revenue. I think there's a fundamental distinction here, in that a DVD has the advantages of rentability, playback on the medium of your choice, and reusability, driven by Hollywood's well-oiled publicity machinery. As such, it can command relatively high prices. A magazine archive strikes me as, well, old magazines. Why does Borders presume that the magazine industry would not have thought of the idea that they could keep selling their magazines? Certainly the viability of that doesn't depend on his "platform", and to a large extent the market has already spoken on this by the (nonexistent) profits old magazines can generate.
Co-branding is an interesting business activity, because some of the great success stories in business are co-branding models. One specific example is when Dryers Ice Cream and Starbucks got together and made their Java Chip ice cream. It became the best-selling ice cream in the world.
Nice buzzword, but I'm not sure how the example he cites has any relevance to the business model he's selling. Dryers and Starbucks worked together to develop a new product; what he's talking about seems to be just another portal.
We've had a lot of meetings with them--extremely positive meetings--and I'm sure they'll come into the platform in short order.
Okay, what is this "platform"? I think I can substitute "web server" everywhere you're using the term "platform" and it'll mean the same thing. I'm not seeing any mention of any competitive differentators in this interview.
The more content that moves behind the pay wall, the more willing people will be to pay.
This is just bad logic. How does B follow from A here? In fact, I'd suggest the opposite, that this basically is just a bait-and-switch model applied to the internet. Personally, I'll go to the sites which give me useful content as a baseline.
Another was an execution error: They mixed really high-quality content with Joe's dissertation on something. And strongly branded publishers don't like to see their content next to second-rate content.
Hmm... oddly, I usually find Slashdot at a filter of 5 considerably better than the "strongly branded publishers". Or moreso, everything2. I must prefer "second-rate content".
They become too focused on making money in the short term, like paid inclusion does. I'm a fanatic about that--I just think that's a horrible thing. If you're telling people that you're paid to do this, like Google does when it separates its paid links from the rest, that's fine. That's good business. If you're not telling people, however, it just seems disingenuous, and it is certainly no way to build a brand.
Okay, so your platform is going to have 140 magazines you represent, from whom you receive your revenue, and you'll offer the user a choice of... those 140 links. Sounds like paid inclusion to me.
In essence, I think Borders should be looking for revenue not in co-branding between him and other word shops, but co-branding between himself and the user. That's what, IMHO, an internet user is most likely to pay for; a system that tailors itself to him, and which he is a participant in, a la Amazon, eBay or participatory sites like this very one. The primary thing the internet distribution channel can give the user is time, in speed of accessibility and speed of finding relevant content. The second thing is variety, which the range of, for example, on-line gaming can offer that 140 channels of old magazine content cannot. I'd suggest he start there with his business model.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I do pay for some content.
I have some subscriptions to some pay sites.
But generally I don't because they overprice.
I don't want several bill payments running through my credit card.
Online subscriptions are too expensive, I only want to pay a few dollars a year. It should be easy and secure to pay. Automatically renewing subscriptions aren't ideal.
It has to offer something better, and it should prove that it is better.
Online prices should be cheaper then a comperable dead tree subscription, even if they offer additional services.
I didn't realize so many people had porn subscriptions.
Honk if you're horny.
Just not the content that most deliver. I can't stand sites that you pay for that give you a tiny screen with crappy compression or sound that cuts out every time you start dloading an iso.
I think it funny that the big media providers can't play nice with the television makers and put built in decoders on TVs. Yeah I'd pay ten bucks extra to watch Star Wars on demand, yeah, I'd pay to play for decent content on video games. Nothing like Starwars Galxies where I have to pay 15/mo. just for the privledge of playing my game that I already purchased for 50.
The problem is not that content is not available. THe problem is that the method of deliver is still sloppy and unprofessional or too expensive to maintain. It is STILL easier to go to BlockBuster and rent. It is STLL easier to put a lan party together, and often more fun. The only thing that was worthwhile, the radio broadcasters sucked the life out of (internet broadcasters). most of what you see these days (not all, mind you) are simply sites asking for money out of goodwill. While that might work for private, small and community-like ventures penny arcade, that doesn't work for corporate America.
TIMEWarner/AOL, NYT, Bloomberg, I will pay for content! Make it as easy as the TV, but make it better quality, and you'll make a fortune. People my age don't watch TV anymore. The net is my TV.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
The first thing that needs to be done is to get micropayments sorted out once and for all. Noone wants to pay a monthly subscription, they want to pay for what they actually use, and they'll probably not know their usage ahead of time. Of course, there's nothing to stop sites still offering cheaper subscription services for those who like that sort of thing.
However, what will really make this work is to find some way to centralize this so that a person only has to pay a single organisation and will get some kind of bill, just like with the telephone system.
The ultimate solution would be to somehow tie it into ISPs, so that the ISP is charged for the micropayments and then passes this cost onto the customer as part of their service. ISPs could bundle a certain amount of "free" service charges with their monthly fee and charge users for anything they use in excess of that, of course giving the customer some way to monitor their expenditure.
People are paying their ISPs already, so they'll probably be less unhappy to pay them a little extra especially if they get some free credit to try before they buy. The problem is setting up the infra-structure for this. It would involve some kind of organisation which runs the system and then have sites which want to make use of it tie into them to charge the micropayments to the ISP or the user directly depending on how the user is subscribed. The user could then get a monthly statement and be able to query anything they don't agree with just like they can with a credit card statement.
This is likely to never happen, since it requires too much cooperation. If it was to happen in any form we'd end up with lots of different micropayment providers all of which are supported by different sites, so everyone would have to have an account with all of them. I can dream, though! :)
You're missing his point (I think). The content here *is not* subscriber supported. The amout that /. takes in from subscribers vs M$ et al. has to be a drop in the bucket. If slash got rid of ads, they would probibly fold. The point is, you can't float a dot com on subscribers alone.
Take newspapers: the price of the paper to the consumer is trivial. Many papers don't even charge any more. They are supported by ad money.
On a different note, doesn't it seem like the Microsoft bunch and hangers-on spend A LOT more ad money here than Open Source?
I pay $4.95 a month for a ESPN.com subscription. I also paid the $24.95 for a yearly subscription to IGN.
So I pay about $85 a year for content. Why? Because it's content I actually find really useful. ESPN has a lot of really good articles in their insider pages, in aditition to things like linking articles to the local paper's websites of my favorite teams on sports stories. Not to mention their own extra content is written by the top guys in the business. IGN has a few nice videos once in a while, and some of their previews are really good. Not to mention with both of them, I got printed versions of ESPN the Magazine, and EGM.
The problem with paying for slashdot pages, or other micropayments, is that I'm getting anything special. I don't care to "help out a website". I want something I can't get anywhere else. If slashdot offered something like a private mirror for linked sites, distribtutions, debian/gentoo mirrors, etc. that's something to pay for. Hell, if even slashdot had their own articles to read to "subscribers only" I'd at least look to see what they were.
So to make a long story short...to anyone that has a website and wants subscription dollars. Make something worth paying for, and people will pay for it. Too bad only a few websites really grasped that idea.
I don't understand the rationale behind this man's thinking...nearly all current articles and news is available for free online...and who cares about old magazines/newspapers? Sure, I keep my old National Geographic's and Popular Science, but I would not pay for virtual copies of then which will be riddled with DRM, which I won't be able to copy or place on DVD-R for archival (probably)... Case in point: I find an intresting article in Scientific American which I decide to share with my friend...I simply give the magazine to my friend (let him borrow if for a few days), how would I be able to do that legally and without breaking the EULA that is no doubt going to be bound to this service. Sure, I have not seen the EULA yet, but I am sure (100% sure!) that I won't be able to let my friend borrow it...
http://chrono.posterous.com/
Kids these days.
Back in the days of MEEPT and penis birds, all my base were belong to Natalie Portman. And IN SOVIET RUSSIA, posters old enough to remember when line was stand-up comedy, not a Slashdot cliche :-)
But looking back at what I just posted, I have one thing to say to Slashdot: Where the fuck is my life?!
Seriously, thanx Andover/VA. I don't know where my life is, but I'm enjoying it.
Would Borders be half as successful as a bookseller if it charged its customers just to enter its stores?
I frequent their stores because they generally have good technical material which I read while drinking sub-par coffee made by overinked and overpierced baristas.
Of ten books I review I might purchase one. In reality, my coffee purchases pay their rent.
Sorry, but it costs to create content. Even worse, it costs to deliver content (bandwidth, etc.).
./ isn't as a "contributor." I am a consumer of their product. I am consuming ./'s bits and bandwidth as I type. Most of all, I am consuming the large audience that slashdot as build up over the years for my little egotistical jaunts into cyberspace.
Most the people I know who've delivered quality content on the net rue their decision. Blogs aren't quality content.
Then there are the tons of reeders who put up put up pourly edited posts, and think, gosh look at this wonderful content I just contributed. I should get all that expensive, extremely time consuming work other people did for free. I don't buy the argument that you can measure the quality of content buy the volume of werds.
The way I see it. My participation in
The act of my typing out my pourly conceived and incomplete thoughts is an act of consumption. It is a tasty little ego trip I go through. Now lets wait and see if I get mod points...delicious little mod points.
I have had 2 successful dealing with making money on the internet.
The first was with my ex-employer. They provided online mail, administration tools and a portal page to schools across Australia, New Zealand, UK and Hong Kong. They also acted as a service provider for several hundred schools in Victoria, Australia.
They were able to make money because of a couple of key reasons. Firstly, schools have to be held far more accountable than the average home user. If a home user uses a product illegally, usually not too much is done. If a school does this, the Principal has the right to fire the IT manager (or whoever is in charge of software/hardware management), and most guys prefer not to lose their jobs over something like that.
Another key was that they kept all of the software online on their own (or leased) hardware. This meant that software was never installed on clients computers, making it easier to track who was on the system, how much they were using etc. This is a sucessful business with around 50 employees.
I also run my own webpage and message board which has around 100 paid members and 2 major sponsors at the moment. Membership costs $10. I consider this quite successful as I originally never wrote the site to make money. I also ran the site without Members for 2 1/2 years before we started accumulating Members. There were several keys to this. The first was having the right website and code development to handle what we wanted. Some of the big sites spend a LOT of money getting this to work, the first problem.
Once we had that, due to a very good standing with readers, most people were more than happy to pay $10 for the year to help support the website. It didn't matter to them that they could get the same information for free anyway, they just wanted to support the site and be considered official members. This has helped me to upgrade the site further (trophies for event days, upgrade the message board to vBulletin (coming real soon) and several other benefits.
The key is providing something that my readers want at a fair price, trying to look after their wants, and providing them with useful information. I also have a couple of sponsors but this discussion isn't about that.
Cheers
Why in the world would someone pay for a magazine online? Can they take it to the bathroom with them? Can they take it to the beach? The hair salon?
Think about it. The internet is an AWESOME repository for free, highly technical, high quality, highly used information. It is not an entertainment venue. Now using TCP/IP to enable video, audio, and gaming applications is entertainment, and for that people are willing to pay: witness MMORPG's, digital song download services (iTunes), etc. But for reading scientific research papers, "how-to program in C++" guides, etc. the "Internet" (not the "entertainment internet") will always be something people aren't willing to pay for. What savings is it to me if I have to pay for it when I could just go grab a copy from the library to take all over the house and outdoors with me for the few weeks I want to be entertained and/or informed by it?
I find it funny that most retailers online still don't get it about online shopping. I'm not looking for market hype to pump up the product online! I'm looking for dimensions, included architectural design methods, interoperable components, stress tests and accompanying graphs, and all the other vast amounts of information to be had that doesn't fit nicely on the back of the box at the store. And if that's not what the online store is selling, it better be hard-to-find, very unique, very specific stuff they're selling or it's not worth my time and effort to order it from them -> I'd rather just run to the store on my way home and pick up the item(s) myself.
This service looks like another pathetic attempt to sell content on the Internet, which failed miserably and continues to fail. It's even easier to filter out ads on the internet than to filter them out flipping through a copy of the magazine on the shelf. I can't run a bayesian filter on the ads in the magazines on the rack at the store or on my home mailbox filled with Publisher's Clearing House junkmail, but I can on my email inbox. I can use everything BUT IE to filter out ads on Internet web pages.
SCO Targets US Government, TiVo: 1.86%
Real Announce Helix Grant Program, Player: 3.96%
Former Intel Engineer Pleads Guilty To Taliban Aid: 1.67%
Novell To Cease NetWare Development?: 8.18%
Sinclair's Answer To The Segway: 0.00%
Given these numbers, it seems that about 2-5% of the active /. readers is a subscriber. If they have a maximum of 30 ad suppressions per day, they each contribute US$ 0.15 per day. The big unknown is of course the number of active /. readers. If it's 50000, then that's 1000-2500 subscribers, or US$ 150-375 per day.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Now, I should mention that when I speak of content, I'm speaking of things like music, movies, text, etc. Those things lose most, if not all, of their value once they become digital and reach the internet. So what can be sold?
Experiences. Slashdot is an experience, live broadcasts (think pay-per-view) are experiences, chats with famous people are experiences, etc, etc, etc.
Certain types of things DO have value on the internet, just not all of them. What is currently going on right now as the internet comes of age is that people are experimenting with it to see what sells and what doesn't. Not everything is guaranteed to sell, in fact, you may ruin your chance of selling a physical version of it as well if you unsuccessfully try to sell something on the net (RIAA again). Its a big gamble, and there will be lots of casualties, but eventually we will learn what can and cannot be sold on the internet.
A good example of how this works is in Snowcrash. Hiro does a search for something with the librarian, and filters for free content only. Yet when he needs something rare or specific, he has to pay for it. In fact, a whole profession (gargoyles) has sprung up around this business of rare/hard to obtain/unique information. Well, just my two (or fifty) cents worth.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Via my monthly bill.
Just like my cable TV, I pay a monthly fee for content.. I also have to pay for my equipment, my electricity usage...
Getting unwanted advertisements on top of that is offensive. ( not to mention the Spam ). So is the suggestion that I have might to pay MORE for the crap that I'm already getting hit with that i dont want.
Don't tell me I only pay an 'access' fee.. as I don't want to hear it. I pay. Period. If they cant make a profit in that business model, then they don't need to be in business.
I remember when cable was touted as 'commercial free'.. because I was paying for it.. that didn't last long... bastards....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Honestly, what I've seen is quite a bit of mentality of "even though this site asks me to subscribe, it works good enough for me without paying - and they're obviously profiting off enough other people to keep it viable anyway".
(I'm very much guilty of this attitude myself.)
It seems to me, especially with web sites offering really "niche" information, they do better by offering everything free - but occasionally begging for donations. Giving people the "sob story" of "We can't afford to keep paying for our bandwidth unless we raise at least X by next month." seems to get regular users to fork over some cash. (Even better if it's made as easy as clicking a "Pay me now with PayPal!" type of button on the main page.)
The trick is, do it like a traditional fund raiser. Show the users regular, real-time updates of the total amount earned, and the goal you're trying to reach. People are much more likely to pay if they can actually see their contribution push a number closer to a target.
As proven time and time again. I implemented a subscription service at IcarusIndie.com for high bandwidth areas of the site in January and have made a nice amount of money. I'm not getting rich off of it but it's enough to know it's a feasible idea. My site isn't large enough yet (and doesn't have a fast enough connection) to expect a large number of subscribers.
The problem is just like any other business, most people just slap up a site, throw some crap on it and expect people to pay. My site was entirely free for as long as my connection could take it. Which was 2 years. I then went through my log summaries, figured out what was taking up the most bandwidth and put it behind htaccess and now sell accounts to access those files.
Another thing is that you can't lock everything down. Otherwise people aren't going to be finding your site. I made sure to leave a bunch of good stuff freely available even though it takes quite a bit of bandwidth. The site is also diverse in it's content to attract people for quite a number of reasons.
The other thing is that most businesses fail. It's not surprising that there are a few big money makers and a lot of no money makers. Setting up a business anywhere takes talent and a product people will pay for. Most people don't have either.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I work at a publishing company with a slew of websites. Sure, we can do what AOL did and block access to everyone but paid subscribers... but then the web visitors will just go to the competition.
For every site, there are a dozen good/decent quality sites that offer the same content. I mean if CNN became a paid site would you pay or go to another news site?
No one has cracked the paid-for-content nut and this effort surely won't do it either. I mean maybe if they sent you a PDF of the magazine for offline reading - but just reading on the web? Forget it.
First off, the selection of mags is even worse than what the local teenager comes to the door trying to sell you so they can "realize their future." Second, after scanning that, I discovered they've added code to the site so you can't use your browser's Back button to get out of it. Did they hire porn techs to program it for them? Will they bring along other ethical practices from the porn industry?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton