Re: Beyond Advertising: Pay-site content, non-adult, non-financial?

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Mon 05 Mar 2001 10:47:22 -0600

C. ANTONIO ROMERO <romero_at_alumni.princeton.edu> WROTE:

>Advertising and merchandising revenues at present
>are falling far short of what's required to keep the
>site on the air, though. Traffic would need to go up at least
>20-fold to get ad revenues to be meaningful... ad views are still
>around 150-200K per month. So at this point they're looking
>at becoming a pay site.

I got this far in the February 21 digest before feeling
compelled to say something. You're the second person to
claim that the free availability of stuff on the Net is
dying in the same digest.

Sorry, that dog won't hunt. I keep seeing certain people
outside this list use that crutch to support their sales
pitches, but the fact is that free services on the Internet
will not only NEVER go away, there is tremendous economic
incentive to keep them going. That is, the majority of
people on the Internet are still looking for freebies.

So, those businesses which try to rationalize away free
services as saying they are dead or dying are not simply
missing the boat, some of them are jumping off of it if
they manage to get aboard for an instant.

Look at what you just wrote: ad revenues are dying. If
you can't get advertisers to pay, don't expect to get
surfers to pay. The advertisers at least HOPE to make
some money. What's in it for the surfers?

Sites which charge for access to content have to offer
something of value that the surfers not only cannot
get for free elsewhere (and there are TONS of sources
of free information on the Web), they have to offer
something that the surfers want enough to pay for it.

Is the market ready for paid access? A fraction of it
may be. But not for general purpose content. Companies
are having a hard enough time persuading surfers to take
out their credit card. The day where you can put up a
Web site and charge people for the privilege of looking
at it is a LONG way off. There are relatively few
companies in a position to charge for access.



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Received on Mon Mar 05 2001 - 10:47:22 CST