I don't have a problem in principle with paying for online content if it's worth my while. But Salon will need to convince me again, because I thought the quality and consistency over there really went down over the last year.

What do you think? Have you coughed up the money? Will you? Why or why not?

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Answers

as long as Tom Tomorrow and Garrison Keillor don't go into the pay site I'm staying out. I like Joyce Millman and some of the movie critics too but not enough to read them constantly. The last time I paid for content (Slate) they went free 9 months later. It would be too bad if Salon went under and if it was 2 years ago I'd consider paying, but not right now.

Now, why the hell don't they stick David Horowitz on the Pay side so I don't have to look at his ugly mug drawing anymore? What a freak.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I paid, but I'm considering it back pay. The consistency is in the toilet, and they keep pulling my favorite fluffy columns. Case in point: I used to LOVELOVELOVE the Out of the Blue series from the guy flight attendant. It was sort of a sick fascination/at least that's not MY job thing.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I haven't paid because if I can get it for free, why bother. But if it goes to all pay, I'll probably cough up because I generally like it.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I dunno about Salon specifically, but I'd like to think we're reaching a point where people are willing to pay for good content. I'd much rather pay a quarter a day to the DocMochiCrash FoodFund than have Beth not write for weeks at a time because she's too swamped at work.

I personally prefer the micropayment model to the subscription model, where you pay a small fee for each article you read (or song you download, or movie you watch, whatever) rather than paying a much larger fee for a monthly or yearly subscription. The downside is that it requires everyone to be on the same micropayment system (or to whip out a credit card every time they want to read your site) and if someone wants to go back and re-read an article they read last week, they'd have to pay again. On the upside it stops people from paying for one subscription then putting their username and password on their blog, plus it allows users to check out the specific thing they are interested in rather than having to buy a subscription to a whole site.

One thing is for sure, advertising isn't working. They can keep making the ads bigger, uglier, and more intrusive but that won't make the model work unless the majority of traffic is controlled by a handful of major players (like television).

Oh yeah, the other problem with micropayments is that every company that has offered them has either never delivered (millicent) or started charging such high fees that you would have to be charging people a buck per view (paypal) for it to make sense.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I would consider paying, if they would guarantee me that the pay portion is utterly advertisement free. No banner ads, no popups, and no editorial advertising.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Nobody's gonna pay for stuff on the net. Like Jim Rome says - "No matter what it is, if it is free -- you will take it."

I read the opinionated liberal rag that passes for a newspaper around these parts for that reason only. And I won't read the mainstream newspaper unless I find an abandoned slightly out of sequence copy lying on some mcmuffin crumb inhabited fastfood tabletop. I've got dozens of trade magazines that go, usually unopened, directly into a cardboard box behind my desk. Talk about conceptual art - the thing is so heavy and chock full of pulp it reminds me of an urban stump.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Rudie,

People pay for Cable tv even though they get regular tv for free. People buy books even though they can check them out of a library for free. People rent movies when they could watch tv for free. People buy CDs when they could listen to the radio for free, even tape stuff off the radio.

If Beth said tomorrow, "These dogs are too expensive, I need to get a second job, my journal is over" or "I'm quitting my lawyer job and going back to school, but I need to get a part-time work study position, this journal is over" how many of us would pay to ensure we could still read her writing (forgetting about the Xeney Law of Journal Quitting... the moment you announce a hiatus you'll be hit with a million things you want to write about)?

I think we would, but only because we've all grown to love her stuff.

Some wouldn't because they don't like her stuff that much, some wouldn't because they can't afford to, and some wouldn't out of principal. Sure, you can read other journals for free, but is it going to be as good (for you) as reading Bad Hair Days?

I'd pay to read her stuff, I'd pay to read Book of Rob, I'd pay to read Pamie if she came back and made the cats talk again. I'd pay to read Stee too. It doesn't matter that I can browse around Diaryland or Livejournal for free. It's not the same thing.

I think the "no one will pay for the net" thing is not as true as it once was. When the net was smaller and the demographics were different, when we all felt an ownership of the net, I think that was more true. When there were much higher barriers to payment (like having to mail in a check) or a huge fear of giving someone your credit card number online, I think that was true.

I think people are going to start seeing more and more of their favorite sites go under before the idea of paying for content becomes widely accepted, but hell, porn sites have been doing it for years (even though I can look at sample files on a ton of sites for free). I also think that we need to see some of the technological barriers come down and payment become super-duper simple before people will do it.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I agree with the analogies you drew in your first paragraph. And I 'spose I can agree that certain people will pay to read a journal. However, the number of loyal journal readers is not an overwhelmingly huge number. And the number of those loyal that would pay is even smaller. The upfront cost to running a journal is relatively small so maybe a person could support a personal site that way - maybe.

But, to talk about making substantial bucks we have to go back to content and service. Unless X can offer something at a price that I cannot get elsewhere for free, then X will have no market base to profit from.

You're right about the evolution of the net too. As technological advances continue to increase throughput and speed, so does the commercial impact of the net. But a successfully commercialized net will not be the net as we know it now. Remember the HP commercial that shows that guy in his pj's picking up his morning paper from his printer tray? Newsreading itself is not some new thing that this guy is willing to pay for but the same old stuff delivered differently in a new package. I can see the same type of thing happening with television, movies, videos, music - in fact - it already is.

At this point, either I've forgotten my point or I'm not sure what, if anything, there is for us to argue about. So I bid you a good weekend friend and if you want a good read, pick up a copy of David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day". Or go to the bookstore, order a latte and read the chapter entitled "You can't kill the Rooster". I haven't laughed so hard since Destiny's Child got booed in Philly for wearing a Lakers jersey on stage.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I lied. I don't bid you a good weekend yet. Talking about bookstores brought up a new analogy. Bookstores kind of sort of work like a web store would. You draw people in with couches, overpriced coffee and rock hard brownies, then give them access to all of your books, bomard them with top seller lists and hope that they buy something. There is no clicking. No interaction with the customer beyond sight and comprehension. If Borders has a subscription or cover charge, they'd better be offering a better than good chance to get laid or at least see some boobage. (Which, by the way, is why porn sites work so well.)

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Now, I bid you a good weekend.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I think it depends on the quality of the content. The mentality toward the Internet is changing, and people are becoming more willing to pay for good content. But that's partly because the quality is increasing. Thanks to better coding and faster connections, you can now get CD-quality music files quickly, rather than staticky .wavs that take two hours to trickle through a 14.4 connection, for example.

As technology improves and makes the media both better and easier to deliver, people will pay for "premium" content much as they now pay for cable or satellite TV if they want more channels and better reception than they can get with an antenna.

But not everyone will. I don't especially like e-books, and I'd rather buy a CD with the full art and packaging than download the mp3s, especially not if the mp3s cost me half what the CD would. I would, in principle, be willing to pay a subscription for access to good content, but I haven't yet found any Web content that I would, in fact, be willing to pay for.

It's all in the value proposition. If you give people something they want at a price they're willing to pay, they'll pay. But the demographics of the electronic media are apt to be somewhat different than that of the more traditional forms.



-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I'm sorry, it's a tv screen and I'm still feeling really bad about paying anything for basic cable. Yeesh, given that everyone I work for has both paper/screen versions, I'm probably biting the hand that types, but once a string-saving-cheap-yankee-bastid (tm) always a .....

I DID buy a few shares of salon once they hit a quarter a share. Heh. There's my encouragement, tho I ONLY read Garrison Keillor and am VERY glad when he takes weeks off because there's only so much text I can absorb, given I spend most of my time reading OLJs (job research, actually...)

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

I'm still bothered at the idea of paying for permission to look at a web page. It. just. bugs. me. I'm more willing to pay for a print magazine in some ways because it's more keepable, more formal, than just printing/saving the premium page (assuming that the site would let me do that). Usefulnesswise, I run a weblog, and what's the point of linking to a premium page that most people can't see anyway? I won't even link to the NY Times stories unless they're one of the few unregister-required ones. I'm not going to waste people's time linking to stuff that they all can't read.

And yeah, if I can get it for free, why the hell am I going to knock myself out to pay? I can live without Salon if/when it dies, and it has definitely become not as much fun to read in the last year. Nothing put in Premium has intrigued me enough to want to pay up $30 bucks (and if the site dies before that year's up, I'll be annoyed at the waste of my money).

A question people haven't been talking about is, what happens when nearly every site is asking for handouts and subscriptions? It seems to be heading in that direction.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2001

I've no problem paying for content. It's just that I've yet to find much content worth paying for.

As folks have noted, Salon's quality has decreased markedly during the past year. TNR is still free, so hey, who cares? I'd actually pay a premium for well written and *accurate* local content covering DC from a local perspective, but so far, no one provides that option . . .

As for paying for journals? Hey, you've got to be kidding ...

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2001

Xeney, it's time for that creepy agreeing-with-Arianna-Huffington feeling again.

Good morning, Colombia Turning loose a force of heavily armed mercenaries in the middle of a bloody civil war in the name of America's war on drugs is more than a misguided policy -- it's utter insanity.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001

I'd pay for Salon if the quality hadn't gotten so shoddy. I used to love it, but now the proportion of articles that I actually enjoy has dropped below critical mass.

Regarding a pay-per-view kind of thing, the real problem with that is the inconvenience-- if I had to whip out my credit card every time I wanted to read an article on a particular site, I'd be mighty peeved. When I want to read, I want to read; Paying separately for each article is like dropping a quarter in a meter every time I turn the page of a book. I'd rather buy the frigging book all at once.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001

I wouldn't pay for Salon because I don't like it. So there. I read the articles when someone points me to them, usually to start a debate. They're great debate-starters despite poor research and writing. But if Salon vanished tomorrow, we could find other good sources for discussion and debate.

I'm not sure what I would pay for and what I would not. I don't have any cable TV because I can't afford it. I don't subscribe to magazines or the daily newspaper. Right now I'm having to do some very strict budgeting. Web subscriptions are very risky -- the site might fail or might end up giving away the content, so why waste my money?

Individual sites, well, that depends. I'm about to set up a really nice Web site that might have to pay for itself someday and I can't say how I'll try to make it do that. I am rarely annoyed by people putting little buttons or banners or links to a wish list as a kind of "passing the hat" to pay for their efforts. Banner ads -- well, it depends on how intrusive they are. Pop-up ads -- urrrrrgh.

So it's hard to say. Necessity hasn't forced the issue for me yet, since I have not seen any sites I like telling me that I should cough up a donation or lose my access to the site. Yet.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2001