CTIA: FCC Boss Says Light Touch Needed For Wireless Regulation

Online Content Providers Recognize That Charging Is A Tough Business Model

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Wed, Apr 5th 2006 3:45pm — Mike Masnick

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.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

ZOMG CENSORED, 5 Apr 2006 @ 4:56pm

I run a free content site...
...A free art class, with free college level lessons (written by myself or another instructor). How to I sustain it? Charge for premium content (lessons assembled in books, video versions of lessons, etc.) Getting the same free stuff in another format. It allows the content to remain essentially free, while giving better stuff a small fee to support upkeep. I personally think it's worked out for the best.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ryan, 5 Apr 2006 @ 5:32pm

I agree
I've seen many 'open source' projects where a product is made, and distributed freely open source. Then, there are books written to help use it, or cds or dvds burned of the product that are sold at a price to support the group, and it seems to work wonderfully. The books are made available online, but partially out of convenience and partially wanting to help keep a good resource like yours, or other open source projects going, people buy the books.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mark, 5 Apr 2006 @ 7:28pm

RE: I run a free content site...
Yeah, a free art class site... but what about turning a profit. You say that they're willing to get premium content for a small fee. What you get in return is the upkeep of the site. However, if you're a newspaper I'm pretty sure you aren't just having 30 reporters, editors, etc. just for the upkeep... you want to turn a profit for the content you generate. Making a profit for how much you invest is incredibly hard on the internet. Ads? People avoid most of them like the plague. When someone advertises to you on Google and its in your search isn't your search more relevant? And not a paid ad? That's how google works.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Daryl Meissner, 5 Apr 2006 @ 9:11pm

Charging for Content
I assume we are not counting pornography content which has continued to make money charging for content since very early on in the internet era.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Daniel.son, 6 Apr 2006 @ 1:04am

I try not to pay for things on the web...
...especially online content. Not to say that I am a pirate (not to say that I am not). What I mean is that I only subscribe to free services online and I use mainly free software.

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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Apr 2006 @ 5:58am

Nothing more than capatlism at work
Isn't this the way our captalistic economy is suppossed to work? The value of a newspaper was fouded on the idea that they could deliver a service that someone could not easily get elsewhere. The internet has changed that by making news information easily accessible worldwide. The same holds true for virtually all business models that are founded on taking free content and creating value through distribution.

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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Thomason, 6 Apr 2006 @ 6:51am

Pay for free - no.
A really hard model to sell! If I go to the Financial Times site, they have a lot of "subscription" stories, as does the WSJ & NYT. So, I just copy the headline, paste it in a news search engine, and voila, I get the story for free elsewhere.
Why then, would I have any reason to subscribe to or pay to see those other sites????
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Apr 2006 @ 8:29am

RE: Nothing more than capatlism
This guy is absolutely right! You cannot charge for distribution of content anymore since distribution is essentially free with the Internet. Therefore, distribution channels no longer provide any added value, and industry only pays for value added.

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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
anonymous coward, 6 Apr 2006 @ 1:17pm

How inciteful!
In other inciteful news, salespeople say that actual selling is toughest part of their job while small business owners say that making enough money to show a small profit is a huge challenge to business survival. In other breaking news, water is still wet!
[ link to this | view in thread ]