The End Of The Pay For Content Model Is Nigh

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1. MikeW
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 12:26 am

   I wonder about Zagat.com….

2. MISS UNIVERSE
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 12:54 am

   There is one exception to this - online magazines like Consumer Reports, that will never accept advertising to avoid the possibility of a conflict of interest affecting the sincerity of their product and service evaluations.

3. Duncan Riley
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 1:09 am

   Miss Universe,
   there are no exceptions in the end, all will fall
   Seriously though, there might be a few high-end hold outs, but I’ll be able to count the number on my hand.

4. Patrick Traughber
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 1:22 am

   I hope the Economist follows soon…

5. Rachel
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 1:29 am

   whoohoo! whoohoo! whoohoo! I’m ecstatic. There is no other way to say how happy I am.

6. Michael Long
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 1:39 am

   Sooner or later micro-payments will take hold. People may not like paying for content, but the popularity of browser software extensions like AdBlocker and Flashblock indicate that quite a few don’t like ads either.

   You can’t have “free-as-in-beer” and block all advertising at the same time. Someone has to pay the bills for the servers to run and the content to be produced.

   Or to put it another way, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch…

7. Robert Park
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 1:56 am

   Agreed, micro-payments will be the way, eventually. The model’s already proving itself through virtual items, like gifts on Facebook or items in Second Life.

   Advertising as it stands right now cannot sustain enough revenue for content, if consumer preferences have demonstrated that they don’t like the current models for online advertising. Ad blockers are proof of that, especially with the amount of malware that is found in ads. The average consumer can’t tell what’s malware on a website until it’s too late.

8. ted
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 2:28 am

   Pay for content will never die as long as there is some content which is A. expensive to produce, B. valued by a specialized audience, and C. difficult to monetize using contextual advertising or display advertising.

   IT’s not mainstream stuff, but those niches will remain impervious to advertising.

9. Darren Stuart
   

   September 18th, 2007 at 2:42 am

   Autosport.com did this a while back when they realised advertisers were willing to pay I think.

   They also still have a paid option which I use which gives you a few extra ad free features.

   I still think there is room for value added services for some content.

10. Todd
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 3:02 am

    Zillow unlocks real estate listings
    AOL dumps paid subscription model
    New York Times abandons pay content

    ..hooray for the consumer!

11. Magnus Hedberg
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 3:13 am

    I agree with Michael Long and others - free content can’t possibly be the only way, ’cause web readers hate ads so much more than magazine/paper readers. Currently, web ads is stealing money from print ads, but I think that’s only temporary. In a few years time, you won’t se half of the ads you see today.

    Still, journalists and others must get paided for their job one way or the other. And the readers must be the ones who pays the bills. If you don’t want to see the ads that pays the content you like to read, then you have to pay for the content yourself. It’s as simple as that.

12. Dr. Jones
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 4:02 am

    What about spiegel.de?

13. Matt G.
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 4:19 am

    This is great news. So when will this happen for video? What is necessary to allow free long form video downloads?

14. Ah Yer!
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 4:19 am

    Todd, Zillow do not actually do listings. Well, they’ve started, but it’s not their core. Zillow’s core is price evaluations. Listings are more of our territory.

15. FiZ
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 4:27 am

    The final days are upon us my friends, repent! REPENT!

16. JR
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 5:27 am

    For general interest content this makes sense as there are too many sources of available for free. NYT was holding back their Op Ed group, which doesn’t really constitute a ton of value for the consumer. I agree they will take down the wall on WSJ.com for the same reason.

    Niche content within special interest categories however will always command a premium because of its scarcity. Magazines that are coming online should not fall victim to the free model. They should protect their best content assets (feature stories) through a subscription or micro payment model. Make the news free for all.

17. bboing
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 8:23 am

    relaying on advertising is possible only if you have HUGE amount of traffic. It does not matter if content (like news) or service (like image hosting). Most internet sites don’t have huge amount of traffic therefore charging for content or services will continue.

18. anonymouse
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 8:26 am

    There are still billions being made in for-pay content online. It will never die, because there will always be value there. Books will die before paid online content dies.

19. Brijit
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 8:50 am

    Commodity content gets commodity pricing, so the price of news goes to zero. Great for the consumer. Unless, of course, our unwillingness to pay for content makes it impossible for the unique, high-quality, low-volume, long-form publishers to make a living, in which case we all lose.

    Wouldn’t it be ironic if the New York Times, which holds itself up as a bastion of editorial integrity and quality journalism, helped kill both.

20. nemrut
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 9:18 am

    ..what about Barron’s.

21. sam
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    i continue to be amazed that a huge number of people scream for ‘free’ content.. if the content is the run of the mill junk that most blogs are, who really cares.. if the content is generated by someone who’s creating the content as their sole form of revenue generation… then where’s the actual rev model.

    it’s way too early to say that ads will make up the slack. in fact, i enjoy reading quite a few sites, but i’ve probably only selected a few ads in the last 2-3 years… and there’s no way you can make the argument that because the ad was on the site, then i somehow was affected by the ad, so therefore, the ad did it’s job…

    for my own $0.02, i’m inclined to believe the ad/content/search model is a poor unreliable model, but just the best we have for now…

    peace…

    ps. however, i, like others will certainly read good content when it’s free!!

22. adair
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 9:29 am

    micropayments are a pipe dream.

    it’s a severe annoyance too.

23. Austin Storm
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    This seems like wishful thinking, but I’m ok with that. Let’s see the free content!

24. Andrew
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 9:56 am

    anyone else notice that Techcrunch is pretty biased in pushing people towards a google model? Like a while back they blasted a website for actually charging money, instead of spamming thier customers with ads.

    Frankly free content is allright for junk, but if you consumers want a real product, they’ll pay up. Why? Because the quality is there…or lack of quality if I say.

    Free is not always the answer…how many people do you think will use Google docs instead of MS Office?

25. Tim
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 10:08 am

    If you’re not paying for it, then someone else is. That means it’s designed to serve their interests, not your own, and it is only a matter of time before they diverge.

26. Greg Spira
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 10:26 am

    There are a few people who will end up paying the Times more as a result of TimesSelect. The crossword remains a pay product, at $40 a year, and the archives from 1923-1987 are no longer free as well, so if you used both, or if you are a home subscriber who made significant use of those archives, you may end up paying more.

    As others have posted, paid content is not even close to being dead; it’s very much alive in niche media. But in terms of the mass media, yes, the pay market has gotten pretty small, and Consumer Reports may end up being the only long-term holdout.

27. iMarketingGuru (SEM Wiki)
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 10:29 am

    People are only willing to pay for niche content/content professionally important to them, if your content is deep and authoritative and you wish to keep your content/ideas behind bars and/or behind closed doors, paid content is king.

    Other than that, content should never need to be paid for per view or per article, that’s just ridiculous. Likely, highly authoritative/scientific content may still be pay per article, but that type of content never hits the critical mass to be seen like this. Only big databases of content should need a paid membership….

    As for paid content, does everyone agree that membership content is good still? or is all pay-for-content going to become obsolete?

28. Alex Linhares
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 10:32 am

    Tim… unless their interests are to gain momentum with the largest possible audience. Exactly what the NYTimes goes for. I pay 80 bucks for The Economist, but I’ve been seeing these last few months that no article–zero articles–have been subscriber-only. So, of course, I’m cancelling. (80 bucks for their full text podcast is too much for me.) I don’t pay 80 bucks for techcrunch, which I get to read everyday. Herbert Simon invented ages ago a term… attention economy; that’s why I think the interests of content producers will stay where they are… in the audience.

29. Dominin
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    Duncan

    Perhaps you need to re-think your comment in that ” all will fall ”

    If that’s the case, why don’t we just all pack it in and conceed the entire web to Google ? Sometimes, I think that’s what the staff at TC proposes. I am amazed at all the rah rah crap for Google among all the TC staff anyway. Google makes money hand over fist with their advertising, but they are so arrogant and greedy, they think the only right applications are Google apps and services. What they don’t develope, they buy, clone, copy, or steal. They have the money to put a lof of young entrepreneurs out of business and they do just that; everytime they clone something. They found all the info to do it with their snooping crawlers. In their eyes, it’s all for their taking. They surely HOPE your thoughts will ring true. Maybe that’s how you retire, un-voluntarily. I wish everyone on the internet charged for every service and app out there. Then at least we get rid of all the junk.

30. Joe Hunkins
    

    September 18th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    this is a win for all of us

    Yes indeed! Legacy media is s-l-o-w-l-y getting the picture. It can include them but they’ll need to play by online rules.

31. Rollo
    

    September 19th, 2007 at 1:38 am

    @4 and 28: Yep, the Economist quietly adopted the free model around the beginning of 2007. For a few months the leader articles stayed behind the pay wall, then they finally went free too.

    Free content is clearly the only way to go. But I can’t help noticing that in the short term the Economist has done badly out of customers like me: keen enough to have paid a subscription, but not nearly rich enough to appeal to their typical advertiser.

32. Rollo
    

    September 19th, 2007 at 4:45 am

    In the NYT’s newfound sharing spirit, here are RSS feeds of Thomas Friedman’s and Paul Krugman’s columns (created with Feed43.com, since NYTimes.com apparently doesn’t deem them necessary) :

    http://feed43.com/1426730218487107.xml
    http://feed43.com/2660782075656156.xml

33. Andersh
    

    September 19th, 2007 at 10:38 am

    I don’t understand why everybody is so hyped about everything being free online. If you really thing about the economics behind it, you will understand that no content is really free and that the models are not sustainalble in the long run. The internet get filled with more and more noise, bad content and advertising.

    You give up your user experience if every thing is free. We all know how often we click ads. It will only be big organisations that can support business models based on adverting in the long run. And to be big you have to be, more or less, bemain steam and BOOOM back where we started. Content not really relevant to anybody, but watchable.

    I hope paid content stays. More and more people are willing to pay to lose the ads if it also means they get a quality experience and quality content. Take for example wannakey.com. They have a really cool model that’s based on everybody being compesated for their role on the internet. And the model only allows quality content to surface. We need more companies like wannakey.com who allows people to be creative and interesting.

34. Michael Geary
    

    September 20th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    Two of the sites that I visit nearly every day are http://www.wunderground.com (Weather Underground) and http://www.dictionary.com. Each one offers their content with ads, or without if you pay. I pay them both. They’re cheap - I think Weather Underground is $10/year and Dictionary.com is $20/year, something like that.

    I’m glad to pay it to get rid of the ads and to get a few little extra features. I never clicked on any of their ads anyway, so both sites are probably making more money from me than they did with ads.

35. Ruth
    

    September 21st, 2007 at 10:42 am

    I agree with Andersh. I’m not so sure this is a win for consumers in a broader sense, although for the NY Times, specifically, I agree it’s a good thing.

    In a broader sense, when content is dependent on advertising dollars to be produced and delivered, it is influenced by the advertisers. This can cause the content to be about “safe” subjects — politically, culturally and socially — with points of view consistent with advertisers’. Even if publishers claim that their editorial is not influenced by advertisers, it can still result in curbing investments in content that is unique and appeals to more fringe demographics, leading to media homogeneity. Who of us is in the mainstream anyway? Don’t we all have unique characteristics and interests? Don’t demographic profiles just force us into classes that support advertising and that are clearly false? (How much of the advertising that you see, even direct advertising, is actually relevant to you?) Going this route would be more of a loss for consumers than shelling out a few dimes for interesting stuff.

    So why do I think it’s good that the NY Times is freeing up content, specifically? Because the content *was* free, then it cost money. The charge for the content did not support its production (ostensibly). It was simply a troll under a bridge, collecting a fee because it could.