Relatively speaking (which is the greatest non-made porn movie title I’ve come up with today) gas prices in the United States are the highest they’ve ever been. On average, US consumers are looking at $3 or more a gallon (stop laughing non-US readers), even adjusted for inflation, the last time gas was this expensive Ronald Regan was forgetting things and taking regular naps.
In the UK right now (which is where I am currently, in case my talentless stalkers have lost track) gas is $7 a gallon. Kicker is - American’s are screaming about crazy prices and the Brits aren’t (the Brits still aren’t flossing either.)
Why the difference? In America prices have risen 30-50% in the past year, and in the UK they haven’t (plus better floss, that lubricated tape’s awesome.)
People don’t react to the value of what they buy, as much as they react to changes. The bigger the change, the more violent the reaction.
In a world where paysites are losing ground to blogs, how will people react to the rise of blogs that look beyond advertising as a source of revenue? A change in price from zero is effectively infinite, and guaranteed to be objected to. How much is a blog feed worth? $20 a month? $20 a year? Nothing at all?
The number of people reading your RSS feed is going to become a more important measure of your online audience than the number of people who see your website, but without a universal micropayment system are ads the only way to make money?
I’d rather pay a small amount for the things I want than tolerate ads, but when some of your favorite blogs start looking for ways to raise revenue beyond advertising what will you do, and what will that do to the business of blogging?
Thing is, blogging, apart from the point of vue of blogger, sixapart or pmachine was never meant to be a business.
To raise the revenue bar the only way I can think of is to use your blog to foster sales of something else… Or to raise the bar of what you offer.
The question you should ask is not “are people willing to pay” but “what are people willing to pay for”.
Jamal,
Very good point indeed. I had assumed that many blogs were presenting the kind of information people used to pay for in business/marketing/design books. As they paid for it in print, will they pay for it electronically now they’ve been educated to get it free?
I use to buy books to explain software like PhotoShop. Now I just Google my questions. Perhaps blogging’s making selling intellectual property more difficult.
Intersting question. I’ve noticed myself not necessarily buying fewer books than I did before blogs- I’m a book junkie, after all- but being more disappointed in the ones I do buy, because usually blogs are better reading and more informative (not to mention tax and shipping free).
I wouldn’t be averse to paying to read an informative rather than personal blog, if the price was right. A network of blogs I liked would be even better- especially if I could pick which ones I wanted to subscribe to, a la carte. That’s probably a ways off though.
I think quite a few people have bought things put out by their favorite bloggers, or things they’ve seen mentioned on or recommended in blogs- though not necessarily through an affiliate link. I know I have.
What types of written (or audio, given podcasts) intellectual property do you think will continue to sell- and maybe the key- how do you think they’ll be delivered?
I started to write a comment about this post but it got so long I made my own post out of it.
Katie,
I think that delivery will be digital, consumption will explode when new viewing technologies mature (digital paper being the most important) and that micropayments will play a major role. Ultimately - people only tend to want to pay for specific items they desire from ‘quality’ producers or access to an aggregator who can find ‘gems’ among a sea of variable quality providers.
If you don’t need to hold it in your hand to enjoy it, why bother paying for it?
I will never buy another newspaper again unless my name is mentioned in it… why would I pay when I can read it for free on the internet? Oh, and I absolutely hate subscription sites…
If you’re not a writer on Fleshbot, the only other way to make money from a sex blog these days seems to allow ads on your site, stick up a donation button or sell merchandise. The problem with merchandise, though, is that no one wants to buy it if it costs a fortune (and the price of Cafe Press merch is astronomical)… besides, the merch has to be clever (so it’s a good thing that Sam Sugar is a frakking genius).
If SugarBank had clever merch, I would totally buy in.
Digital paper you said? Check this : http://www.activemag.co.uk/mci/
What I was saying is why people would pay for blog content knowing there will always be free stuff out there?
Why pay for blogs when Sam Sugar says not even pandora is worth paying for? For example, why pay for typepad when wordpress.com has just launched? [by the way, I sent you an invitation, so check your junk mail folder]
I know I won’t pay for blog content, what I would pay for is carefully selected knowledge or fun carefully crafted with sugar coating on top of it and compiled so that finding the information by myself would take ages… That is called a book.
Some blogs (like this one) are a lot like chattier books, with a pretty low fluff ratio. I’ve bought nonfic books with a higher fluff ratio, come to think of it.
Print copies are handy, but when we get portable, convenient, transferrable digital books- none of this having to install and activate if you’re going to have a copy on your other computer- then some blogs just might be worth paying for, or the authors will collect and edit some of their posts and publish them in a more “standard” book format.
Too many online projects disappear at random. I think paying their creators is a pretty good way to encourage them to stick around- and I prefer straight payment to donations, since the first creates an obligation to keep the content available.
People will still pay for print fiction, knowing they could write their own or read it for free online. It’s an issue of quality and time invested to find quality for free (ie quality is worth paying for; convenience is worth paying for). Of course online a certain number of crap things make money while a lot of good free things, people will refuse to pay for, so I’m not sure it’s a good analogy…
Maybe cheap pay editions of resource blogs, with extended information the free versions lack, would do all right. I’m not suggesting crippling the free versions- just doing a little more in exchange for payment.
Ms. KitKa, you’re totally tempting me. There’s no money in Cafe Press but if I made it would you model it?
Jamal, I see your points but I still hope that you’re wrong. I think blogs can evolve to the point they’re worth paying for. Ad’s are a customer cost - it’s hust hard to measure. I’d happily pay $0.05 to read a post from Seth Godin. People might pay $0.01 to read a post from lesser names.
I agree it won’t work universally, but I do think it’ll work well enough to make some people very comfortable.
Katie - I’m going to have to interview you again and this time we’ll simply talk business. Planning to be in the New York or LA area soon?
I think you’re right. What’ll be most interesting is the ability to pay small amounts optionally. I’m guessing that enough people will happily pay a small quantity for a ‘tier-1′ resource to make advertising redundant. I can see blogs which offer supplemental materials, or access to comments, for a nickel or less per post and which make a good return from that. Even at a post a day that’s still less than the cost of a couple of newspapers a month.
Why isn’t Paypal rushing to this? C’mon Google…
“If you build it they will come”… but “if you put it up on Cafe Press, I will make you cum with a series of photos of me wearing it”.
And that’s a promise…
Ms. Kitka is not single, Ms. Kitka is not single… Nope. It’s hardly working…
Are you familiar with http://www.bitpass.com/?
Thanks Ellie,
The problem is, pre-paid is not micropayment. Charging $3 is charging $3. Even is after that you can pay fractions of a cent - the resistance is that first big charge.
It’s not worthless, but true micropayments make that first charge $0. You should be able to buy websites like candy. $0.20 only, no catch. That’d be beautiful…
Paypal, Google or… IBM?! Take a look at this :
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/micropayments
Interesting Jamal - I wonder if their system has the ability to get past the initial charge dilemma…
A tip?
http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/2005/09/tips_accepted_h_1.html
Thanks for the… tip… Jamal. This is pretty timely - I have a bandwidth issue, discovered today, I’ll blog about this week I’m sure.
I was wondering… You know I told you about my project? If I was to offer you free weblog hosting (not censured) with say (how much bandwith do you need by the way?) XXXGB bandwith, would you say yes? You see, you are a “mem”, you influence and attract other people attention, and you know a lot of people.
By the way I am always wondering why there is no host that does it a little bitchy like mediatemple (once you’re a know artist, they give you free hosting plus all the bandwith you can eat : k10k.net, shauninman.com, etc…)?
Jamal - your offer’s very kind. My needs are growing and my problem is soon to be how to combine storage (which I have limited amounts of) with bandwidth (which I am eating ever faster). This month I estimate I’ll use over a TB of transfer across SugarBank, Podnography and PSP Porn. Ouch…
Jamal - your offer’s very kind. My needs are growing and my problem is soon to be how to combine storage (which I have limited amounts of) with bandwidth (which I am eating ever faster). This month I estimate I’ll use over a TB of transfer across SugarBank, Podnography and PSP Porn. Ouch…
Of course - reliability is absolutely essential. You’re reading my mind though Jamal. I was going to post on that this week.
Yes but… You’re using typepad on sugarbank aren’t you (it shows when you post a message - in Firefox) and on pspporn it would seem (thanks netcraft), I am assuming you have at least the pro package (because of the url mapping), so I really don’t know how you handle that kind of bandwith (does typepad makes you pay by the GB?).
Sugarhive I don’t know if it’s on hostway (cheap names but pricy servers) or dreamhost.
My potential offer (which won’t be effective in two to three months now) mise a part, have you considered using flickr (for images) odeo (for podcasts) as back ends (so that they get to have headaches for bandwith and storage, not you) - they’re free (I have not really got into finding free video storage yet)
Jamal - to avoid boring other people I’ve emailed you privately.