[thelist] End of the Free Content Ride?

carole guevin carole at soulmedia.com
Wed Mar 20 13:51:01 CST 2002


Hi Daniel,

Before answering I want to state this:

a) the following are MY opinions
b) reflect over 2.5 years of research
c) and I don't speak for other portals/resources sites owners

:Quick question about your survey, from a purely newbie standpoint on...
:etc.. i guess what i'm wondering, besides why would people pay a
:subscription for it and the other sites,

As victims of the site success:  bandwidth costs for one; maintenance costs;
brainware costs; future dev costs.

: is why did they choose now as
:the time(if they indeed did choose it, if they didn't then this is a
:hypothetical question i guess) to ask for subscription type fees?

Timing:  In traditional media *3* is a trend:

- Coolhomepages looking for 2000 yearly voluntary subscribers
- Digital-Web looking for a voluntary donation from their audience
- Praktica content access is as of now, strictly on a subscription basis.


Before leaving for a recent conference (sxsw) - I launched a new research
project comprising of exploring a *primitive* model for revenue generation
for indie content producers, excerpted from an abstract I had sent to
Numer02 - France past November.

During the conference - passionate discussions arose around that topic:

1) I really wasn't expecting *it* to be so *upfront* a preoccupation
2) it confirmed that it is indeed a *real* issue
3) media started pushing articles very rapidly within 2 weeks time - whereas
the articles when I started collecting them were very sporadic and that,
dates back to approximately 2.5 years.

Mar 18 launched a mini survey on netdiver on this topic -
http://netdiver.net/whatsnew.php - which I'm asking that the url circulates
in order to generate a large pool of responses.

This am Adrian's article, now this post - my guess - it's a fair assumption,
something is definitely in the *air*!

:things being equal that would make payment necessary, would people -
:especially independant websites - be considering a subscription type fee
:if Salon, for example, still provided all its content freely?

Salon free or for a fee content has nothing to do with this at all - weren't
they bought by a company?

There are 3 areas where we impact directly as content producers:

Two (2) positively:

- academia: students and teachers using online resources for free - yet
students pay for curriculum, teachers get paid to teach curriculum scooped
out of our web community.  I know for a fact that either links to netdiver
or articles I've written are part of such curriculum.

- web community valuation: our community is an alternate educational system,
that educates mostly in *real time*. Corporations benefit from those
resources and in turn, charge clients for acquiring that expertise.
Students will have a profession.  Studio and freelancers learn the trade and
better serve their clients. If we don't start organizing and taking
ourselves seriously - meaning that our content has value and needs to be
paid for.

One (1) negatively:

- media attention:  the past recession was shouldered by our community and
blamed for the dotbombing full and hyper mediatized by all around medias
(TV, Radio, Newspapers/Magazines).  BTW did you know that on 50 jobs lost
last year - only 1 was IT related? there are numerous indications that

a) wall street inflated the *valuation* of what a successful web site was by
used of unproven models.
b) our potential clients believe wall street
c) our potential clients acquire information mainly from traditional sources
(industry magazines and business newspapers).

We NEED to generate a new awareness, buzz whereas success stories would
lever our industry so that OUR potential clients be clued in that we are
actually building the web and NO we are not a fantasy poor add-on marketing
feature for their yearly spending on getting their company somewhere. Also I
know from media people directly - that they are idle right now and looking
for stories.

Mobilization is the key word here - and organizing as such takes more than
generosity from a few.

:for content that had been provided freely, people flipped out. It was
:like the mortal sin of the Web.

The internet was NEVER free:

1) access costs (pc, hardware, connection, software) are not free.

2) site costs (DNS fees, hosting space, bandwidth consumption, backend
requirements) are not free.

3) content costs (editors time, collaborators time, info acquisition time,
review of content/submissions time, graphic work time, content management
time, feedback time, support time, interactivity time, future dev time) are
not free.

Having 2) + 3) split between all benficiaries is a sensible solution to
ensure:

1) survival of independent resources which are in fact *building* the web in
order that they DON'T disappear and that big corps become the sole
proprietor of the web.

2) maintaining everyone's level of expertise to it's present pace and
funding for projects to venture further into what the web needs to become
(independently from traditional sources or outside pressures: such as
corporate ownership, sponsorship, advertising, etc.)

3) a fair retribution from the community for the community whereas first
hand beneficiaries become firsthand supporters.

Then the internet will stay FREE to BE!

carole
+ feed your eyes! + http://netdiver.net!
+ communication design studio + http://soulmedia.com
+ IDo + http://independentsday.org
+ think, dream, do + http://afterchaos.com

...<<the WEB is yet to come!>>...















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