What online content would you pay for and how much?

Yes sometimes I pay for content. There is a German computer magazine named c't with a few very interesting articles but a lot of advertising (200 pages).
I go to their website where I can read the few articles I'm interested for 20 cents per article.

- domi

FindSP asked us: What online content would you pay for and how much?

Short answer: none.

Longer answer: maybe, way way way out on the fringes of reality, some. A little teeny-tiny bit. Stuff that was so highly specialized that the only way I could get it was by paying more for it somewhere else.

Example: access to the manufacturer's repair manuals for that hunka-junk that my DH lovingly calls a "car". I would pay a (very) small fee for easy access to exactly the pages he needed to repair his Junkmobile. After all, Helm wants more than $59.95 for the entire shop manual. To answer your inevitable question of "how much would I pay for access to exactly those pages?" the answer is "not enough to make you happy...". Probably $4.95 tops. Why so little? Well, there are about eleventy-gazillion (OK, maybe not quite that many) or so amatuer web sites all dedicated to repairing, restoring, racing, and generally blathering on and on about the Junkmobile.

The Junkmobile reigns supreme with "car guys" "gearheads" and "wrenchs" all over the 'Net. They love it. Love to write about thier own ride, and all the "mods" they have made to it. Put up big old pictures that take 10 minutes or more to download of them standing stiffly next to thier pride and joy. They have mail lists, and FAQ's and Internet-based car clubs. There are whole pages dedicated to troubleshooting and repairing common (and not so common) problems. Databases list part numbers and even catalog numbers for tools needed to make it all happen. They have conventions and swap meets, and they troll eBay with a ferocity that can be frightening. My DH has a bookmark file that is stuffed with links, categorized and alphabetized. All about the Junkmobile. Out on the edges of all this mania are vendors, magazines, and other assorted hangers-on that also have sites devoted to the care and feeding of the Junkmobile.

In other words, if you can think of something you might want to know about the Junkmobile... chances are that someone has a page about it over on Geocities/Yahoo I can access for free.

Those of us who have been working on the Internet for the last 10 years or so can remember many sites or "portals" (notice how that word isn't used nearly as much these days?) that once intended to charge for content. The list is long, and most of them are now gone, or have moved on to other "revenue streams" to pay the bills. Want an example? Disneyblast.com is suffering. Families simply won't pay for kid-friendly content that they can find in other places. It might not be the same "high quality" that Disney tells us we'll get if we "subscribe" at $39.95/year, but there are simply too many free alternatives out there.

I could be wrong, but I just don't see it happening on a big scale. The vast majority of web users won't pay for something they can find (or, more importantly, think they can find) for free.

If it's available for free elsewhere then no.

The thing about the Internet is that it's success was built on free information and content so changing this will be very hard.

It's strange because we pay for most of our offline magazine/newspaper content but aren't willing to pay for online content.

MSN do plan to charge people and I think it will be a big success for them simply because they offer so much. It won't be long until you have to pay to use Hotmail but with that you will be able to watch live streaming concerts from the largest artitsts on the planet.

I wouldn't pay. Maybe just me; but I can't think of anything I'd pay for.

Originally posted by Tommy

The thing about the Internet is that it's success was built on free information and content so changing this will be very hard.

It's strange because we pay for most of our offline magazine/newspaper content but aren't willing to pay for online content.


I can remember in the early days when the Internet was pretty #@!! expensive. For access to AOL's proprietary content and USENET newsgroups (in the days before there was web access included) I paid $300/month (this was in the before time when there was no such thing as unlimited hours). I paid $75/month to my web host for a very small amount of server space, and no tech support. I was expected to figure it out on my own, and I did.

It was AOL's burying the country in floppies and CD's;as well as porn sites which gave private viewing without public purchasing, both of which charge for access to proprietary content, that drove the success of the web with consumers, it was the dotcoms that tried to capitalize on that success with their 'give it away for free and make money from selling banner ads' business plans. Plans which would have worked had the artificially-inflated CPM rates stayed constant.

Doing so created a false sense of entitlement in the public, a belief that the Internet and it's content should be free-even though it is expensive to provide. And once the bottom dropped out of the banner ad rates, the days of wine and roses were over for both the dotcoms, and the more wired consumers who were using their free services. Their sites didn't have the wide adoption by consumers that might have kept them in business even with banner ads going for pennies on the dollar.

It will be interesting to see how things play out as the market gets deprogrammed. There is quite a bit of anger right now towards the companies who either went down in flames suddenly or started charging for formerly free services, but in time everyone will have to face the universal truth of TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The internet is not a cornucopia pouring out an endless stream of free content.

The free services on the Internet are now slowly changing to paid services.

HumanClick is one of these currently being talked about :

http://forums.webhostdir.com/showthread.php?threadid=1191

As the market develops, and depending what the big boys do I think it's quite likely that we will end up paying for some of our content.

Right now I would be quite happy to pay a small subscription for access to news.bbc.co.uk as it's one of the best news sites on the net.

There was talk of micropayments for what you read.

Like Phoenix says, we live in interesting times.

I'll soon be looking for content for my web site and I thought the question was about buying the right to use content on a website, which I wouldn't, though I haven't found a really good place for free content that I can use.

As for my own use, I wouldn't even pay for a physical magazine. If Web Techniques wasn't giving me a free subscription, I wouldn't subscribe to anything, except cable TV.

In the uk there was a similar pricing for ISP's, usually around £20 per month....then the craze was to offer 'free' internet and you just pay the call charges...then people found out this was crap and paid for proper access again etc

I believe that the internet is slowly finding its level - ie. people wont pay for news when bbc.co.uk/news is free - but people will pay to use eBay or to keep an eye on real time shares info etc.

However, this board is not the average cross section of internet users (most can probably remember programming BBC-B's or something!) and many new users see the internet as already very commercialised etc. and know no different.

Time is great, as companies who can make money online will be there in the long run, and those who cant make money will die off. The only win-win situation is to provide others the 'tools' to try...such as er, hosting :)

re-reading that it is an off topic ramble. Note I havent had more than 5 hours sleep per night for the last 3 weeks.

I'm sorry, but this type of question just can't be allowed to continue per the forum guidelines. If anyone wants to contact this member, please do so privately. Danke.