Subscriptions might just work

Nice update

Submitted by isaac on October 24, 2001 - 20:06.

Thanks for this. I think it serves as a concise update on the future of content and financial models on the Web. :)

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Well written, well read?

Submitted by damclean on October 25, 2001 - 20:27.

While your article may be true, it's important to remember that sites like slashdot and CNet are in the business of making money from their content.

Other sites (like *yours truly*) isn't motivated by profit and thus should never require subscription for content. Though evolt does require donations of time, effort and, every once and a while, cash. It is the community that keeps it going.

However, if you're not paying anyone to go through articles (a professional editor) the articles may not be well formed or written and people may not want to read them, or may even dismiss the site as a content poor site.

But will the site survive? Probably. These days, Plastic is surviving solely on the contributions of its users, careful pruning of its creators and moderators and the money that is keeping its servers online and domain name registered.

Making money? Nope. Having fun? Looks like it. At the end of the day, if there's real community, someone will always be willing to pay the Web host to keep the box switched on.

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Where subscriptions could work

Submitted by csaila on October 26, 2001 - 14:08.

You’re totally right, damclean. There is a real difference with profit and non-profit sites, and, thanks to a dedicated group of volunteers, revenue is not necessarily a top concern for community sites like evolt (and the current edition of Plastic).

Subscriptions, I believe, can be a good option for:

• community sites—rather than straight news sites—struggling to stay afloat
• and news sites with a strong community, and thus a committed user base

In fact, the latter case may be the only way subscriptions would work for a commercial, general news site.

Salon was targeting 50,000 paid subscriptions in its first year, and after six months—and 25,000 subscribers—is on track to meet that. One-fifth of the subscribers come directly from its community services.

The Salon community, rather than walk away, has help slow the bleeding.

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I'd subscribe, if...

Submitted by damclean on October 27, 2001 - 12:00.

Subscribing to Salon sort of seems like a no-brainer to me. Their content is well written and well edited. Obviously 25,000 people agree with me. However, for a site that doesn't have the professional writing, but does have the unbridled enthusisam of its members, will people pay to read that? I'm not so sure. Then again, maybe I'm wrong.

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Not content but subsciption based..

Submitted by ruzz on October 28, 2001 - 05:29.

Though short I found this article personally interesting for a couple reasons. Recently (12/10/01) I launched my company into the 'weblog application' market as a yearly subscription based service. While I know clearly this will limit my market share and make me far less likely to show up on CNN like some of my FREE competitors I feel service based free apps need to come to some tried and true business understandings.

It has long been known in the pirated software arena that you can in fact get software for free but often times what you sacrifice can be important down the road. Primarily good support for the application and innovation from the company. You need only look at Corel's problems to see this.

But tying this back to web services, like blog apps, I believe there to be a market of people who are interested in experimenting and eventually getting to long term usage that simply can't or won't do it by themselves. This came as some what of a revelation to me.

While in development of BigBlogTool I envisioned my features being the draw for most users. I created a host of innovative features that my competitors could have given resources and time but didnt because they were busy supporting rapidly growing free services. My theory being that if I could get a small base of paying customers I could afford the time and energy to develop new features and new ideas for the tool. I almost missed the boat.

In the short time that BBT has been live the overwhelming feedback has not been about the great features (though each user has their favorite feature). It has been almost entirely based around the level of support and assistance they recieved during the ever critical setup phase. Instead of fooling for hours, or in some cases days, trying to problem solve thier way out of something they only half understood my staff was able in most cases to solve thier problems in minutes. They have responded by becoming overnight loyal customers.

This doesnt even address the second issue of pay for service web apps; stability. When you combine rapid growth with little or no funding you have a path for failure short term and if improperly managed, long term. There can be no other outcome from putting these two elements together. Even the above mentioned MetaFilter has had serious server outages and connectivity problems and as I write this they are not accepting new users to minimize thier server load -- even after taking supplemental advertising dollars. If you throw on more element into the metafilter mix they are done. That element being a reliable service offering the same level of content as they do.

All that said and done it remains to be proven whether the users themselves are ready, or willing, to cough up the dough to help the developers make applications that they want to use. If the traditional software industry faced this dilemma imagine the number of companies that would quickly go out of business. Imagine the stagnation of the market.

This of course, IMHO, is what the web itself is facing. We see new startups come and go overnight. Good ideas backed with minimum of money that meet an ever growing weariness of users to jump on the next web idea for fear it will be gone in a week or month. I believe the only long term solution is to have customers accept some responsibility for thier desires. They need to come to the understanding that if they want leading edge development and cool applications then they will need to create an enviroment with thier dollars that attracts the people who can give them such things.

BBT has made more money in the first two weeks (in actuall customer payments) than my competition has in two years of free service. Thats a bit of spin on the situation but the reality is as a developer who spent a year in utter poverty creating this application I would much rather get a 9-5 job developing widget databases than sweat blood over an application that will get me some fame short term and then eventually succumb to the myriad of challenges that come from having a user base that regards paying for things offensive.

From what my customers tell me I am on the right path with this so far. As for those who come to the site and decide they would rather not pay I think it is fitting they suffer through the problems and stresses of thier business apathy and of course, when they grow frustrated with the intermittant free services I will be here waiting to take thier money and treat them as they rightfully should be: Paying customers.

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