# Is the era of "free" web content drawing to a close? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2009, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309 "2009-07-26T08:36:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309/21 "2009-07-27T15:31:01Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The problem is that there’s going to be so much free content floating around. > > If you’re a young cartoonist, and you make a new web comic, how can you charge for it if no one knows about it or cares about it? People might pay for Doonesbury, but they aren’t going to pay to read the first installment of Lemurbury. > > I have to distribute Lemurbury for free until I establish an audience. Only when everyone is saying “You’ve got to read Lemurbury, it’s brilliant!” could I charge for it. But the problem is that if I start charging, then people are going to stop linking. “You told me to read the latest Lemurbury, but then it said I’d have to pay $15.00 to read it, so forget it”. > > Now suddenly instead of Lemurbury being a hot up and coming property, it’s now a dying property because only the people who already care about Lemurbury read it. > > I can’t compete against the free webcomics. Either I choose free and widely distributed, or I chose pay and narrowly distributed. And narrowly distributed means that I get almost nothing from pay anyway. > > As long free content providers give a “good enough” experience, there’s no way pay content providers can survive. Sure, they might be better than the free stuff, but if the free stuff is pretty good then the marginal utility of paying for slightly better stuff is nonexistent. > > Television and radio survived for decades by giving away their content. I don’t see why it’s so impossible for internet content to be given away for free either. What is needed is a way for someone to charge a nickel (or even a penny) in such a way that it is nonbrainer for someone to pay and that the recepient receives almost all of it. Also where the payer can easily cancel at any time with no risk. I don’t know if that can be done but that is what is sorely needed. The problem with the new cartoonist, IMO, is that I am unwilling to shell out $5 for something new…and even if I was…it is a pain in the ass. I have to fill out a form, give cc info and then there is some risk imvolved. I may like your cartoon…but it is just not worth the time and hassle to get it. Now…if I see a cartoon of yours and like it…and it says I can receive 5 more for free and after that pay 5 cents per day until I cancel it and all I have to do is say yes…hell yea…I would subscribe to your cartoon! ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309/22 "2009-07-27T15:32:35Z")
> [@Strinka](#): > > It seems to me some of the most successful online organizations are free. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook. I don’t see them being not free in the near future. Google ain’t free, they get a fraction of the ad revenue from the lion’s share of ad-clicks on the web. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309/23 "2009-07-27T15:44:17Z")
I’ll give you my opinion for $5.00. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309/24 "2009-07-27T16:20:03Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > It would ultimately be a good thing if web content went to a pay system. As it is content providers cannot sustain their models without some sort of revenue stream. People are already making money providing free content. Mainly by providing ad space. There are also a couple of markets online that people are willing to pay for: dating sites for example, but payment there is mostly a way of ensuring you’ve got serious content (having to pay discourages “spam”). Otherwise you’d have to have some pretty unique data to sell; I know a site that sells high-resolution scans of birth records etc, and people are prepared to pay a buck for a couple of scans. Given the marginal costs of providing content (really, really close to zero, except for video), there is absolutely no way most of the web will ever be on a pay-per-view system. There are way too many people able and willing to provide what we’ve got now for free. You can’t compete with free. That said, I’m fairly sure that there are ways to get people to pay for a really good news site. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309/25 "2009-07-27T17:54:14Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Google ain’t free, they get a fraction of the ad revenue from the lion’s share of ad-clicks on the web. Google IS free, in the sense we’re talking about. It doesn’t cost anything to make a Google search. They have other method of making money instead of charging the end user. And this is the future of the internet. You can make money, but you’ll never make money charging the end user, because the hassle of collecting that money is going to cost more than you’ll make. If you can’t support your site through ads, then your site will remain a hobby. Sure, there will be sites that can get away with charging. The Wall Street Journal is the premium example. But you ain’t the Wall Street Journal, kid. Charging even 5 cents to read your blog is too much. And you can’t support yourself by charging 5 cents a read anyway. If you can’t figure out a way to produce your blog and charge readers nothing, then your blog won’t exist. Maybe you produce your blog as a hobby. Or as an adjunct to your other services–say, you’re a lawyer and you write a law blog, and the law blog is essentially PR/marketing for your professional services. Or you sell ads. Or you’re a kind of flack who gets paid in various ways by various interests to advance those interests. The only other model that I can see working is a sort of Cable TV model. You pay $X a month for “the internet”. There’s an additional fee from your ISP for content. And that gets you unlimited access to everything, everywhere. And that fee is distributed to creators in some way. So 1 billion people chip in $10/month, which creates a fund of $120 billion a year. Then that’s divvied up by every website on earth based upon how much traffic that website gets. There’s have to be some severe regulation to protect against clickfarms and other such games, but while that might be burdensome to website owners it could be unseen and unnoticed by users. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-era-of-free-web-content-drawing-to-a-close/504309.md?page=1)