Isn't It Cheaper To Give It Away?

from the not-really-the-point,-I-guess dept

Forbes takes a look at some of the new plans to charge for content, such as Inside.com's plan to charge $0.40 per article read - and points out (correctly) that the transaction system itself makes it cheaper to just give the content away. First there's the issue of setting up the transaction system, which can be a pretty steep upfront cost. Than the per transaction costs can run pretty high (often much higher than the cost of a single article) meaning that each time you buy an article at one of these sites, you're making the company lose a lot more money than if they'd just given it away for free.
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  • identicon
    Brandon, 26 Jul 2001 @ 9:48am

    unless

    Unless they aggregate the transactions, and only bother billing at higher points, ie after you've spent $5 or $10.

    Of course, the real problem is that 40 cents per article is way too expensive. How much is that newspaper, again?

    Brandon

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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