Online Content Providers Recognize That Charging Is A Tough Business Model
from the took-'em-long-enough dept
Year after year after year, studies come out somehow claiming that the online market for content is booming. However, every year it needs to be pointed out that these studies are misleading at best -- as they miscount "services" such as dating sites as if they were the same thing as an online newspaper subscription. For a while, this was encouraging online publication to experiment with subscription models, even as it was becoming increasingly obvious that it was a very difficult competitive market unless you had something to really differentiate yourself. So, it's good to see a new study coming out of the UK that disproves the idea that more publications are charging for content. By breaking out just media sites, the study found that the number of publications that charge for content has dropped nearly in half over the past year. Instead, many of these publications are finding good results from advertising. The firms that are charging claim they're making money from it -- but often you have to weigh those claims against both the opportunity costs from fewer impressions to sell to advertisers and the future potential for lower readership as readers gravitate to free sources. This isn't to say that money can't be made in charging for content -- but that it becomes quite difficult in a competitive market (as the straight news market often is).Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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I run a free content site...
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I agree
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RE: I run a free content site...
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Charging for Content
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I try not to pay for things on the web...
Btw... I read somewhere that google is getting into the online dating scene. Another free service to kill off the dying pay services, I suspect.
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Nothing more than capatlism at work
Porn is an excellent example of how monetization via the web will thrive because the content in and of itself is deemed valuable. Please no slamming me on whetehr you think porn is rightor valuable since the stastics show this is a service many people will pay for. Sports, TV shows, movies, music are all other examples of valuable content that cant be had for free.
Honestly I am not really sure why this shocks anyone since it is a fundamental tenant of the world we live in.
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Pay for free - no.
Why then, would I have any reason to subscribe to or pay to see those other sites????
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RE: Nothing more than capatlism
Only content generation and advertisement have any value. To clarify, the RIAA does not generate content. It merely is a distribution channel, and as such adds to value to the music industry. Newspapers are similiar since they all report the exact same associated press stories and talking points.
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How inciteful!
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