Paying for Online Content: An Eventual Evolution?

(pic via www.slate.com)

To Pay or not to Pay?

People will not pay for web content. We cannot create information systems where people pay for online content, or can we? According to Jaron Lanier, journalist and author of "Pay Me for My Content", "information could be universally accessible but on an affordable instead of an absolutely free basis". Nikesh Arora, president of Google for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, agrees with Lanier suggestion of charging people for Internet content. In fact, Arora believes that "the web economy will evolve just like the print economy, which means that people will eventually pay for content online".

Take the bad with the good

ConsumerReports.org, MLB.TV, and ITunes are just a few well-known examples of paid sites that are fruitful and prosperous. However, paid content's failures are also well-documented. In "Not all Information wants to be Free", author Jack Shafer enumerates a few "paid model" sites that plummeted in that last decade:

"Slate gave up on the subscriber model in early 1999.The New York Times folded its TimesSelect product of columnists and archives in 2007, concluding a two-year run. The latimes.com set free its Calendarlive section of arts, reviews, and listings in May 2005[...]Inside.com, which charged several hundred dollars a year, failed to attract its 30,000 desired subscribers and expired."

Make money online

Despite the high rate of failed "paid content" sites, it is still possible to make money online by writing. In "Make Money Online-6 Websites that Pay Writers", author Dave Ickes lists 6 websites that actually pay writers for their skill. For example, SSWUG.org is a technology focus website that pays a minimum of 20$ per submitted article.