Why People Will Pay for Content
December 8, 2009 by Deb Ng
Filed under Thoughts and Stuff
I’ve been thinking about paid content a lot lately. It’s causing major discussion and debate among both writers and readers, but it’s something I’m sure we’re going to see a lot of in the very near future. It’s going to be a slow sell, but mark my words, it’ll sell.
On the web, there are buyers for everything.
A lot of people hesitate at the idea of paying bloggers and news sites for content, but I don’t believe this will be the case forever. In fact, I believe paid content is the future of the web, and here’s why:
People are always willing to pay for good information
We subscribe to newspapers and magazines and pay for continuing educations classes. We have no problem shelling out $100 for an ebook or $500 for a webinar. We buy books and pay money to join elite forums. That’s not going to change. People are always willing to pay for good information from trusted sources.
As James Chartrand and I learned on Twitter last week, for every two people who won’t pay for content, there’s one more who has no problem with it if the creator is someone who is trusted to consistently provide good, valuable, useful content. It’s the reason Darren Rowse earned $72,000 within the first week of his ebook launch or brings in tens of thousands of dollars each month with his paying forum. It’s the reason so many writers pay $99 a year to join the Freelance Success forum and newsletter to receive one market in their mailbox each week and the ability to commiserate among their peers. If they feel they’ll learn and advance their careers, people will pay money. It’s not a matter of if they will or won’t, because they already do.
Folks are also desperate for quality. They don’t want regurgitated garbage. They don’t want to search for medical advice only to find factually incorrect, rewritten twenty times over content. They want to come upon information they can actually use in term papers and other research.
Make no mistake, readers will pay for reliable content from reputable sources. Parents will pay if it means their children can find legitimate information for their school work and consumers will pay to get real reviews for the products they use every day. There’s a thirst for knowledge. Not rewritten knowledge, but the good stuff. The true stuff.
With a subscription-based content plan, publishers can attract the best writers
Even though I believe good writing is good writing regardless of pay, I also believe many of the best writers are attracted only to higher paying work. With a subscription-based content model it will be easier to hire quality experts to write journalistic, highly researched reports and articles. Most content sites now don’t make enough in revenue to pay writers enough to thoroughly and accurately research a piece. A paying model will enable a higher payment for writers and allow them to write more than essays or “how to” content.
Readers won’t go for it…at first
Readers will balk, they always do. They didn’t like ads on blogs and they didn’t want to pay $200 for an ebook, but they did and they still do. Almost everything Internet users said they wouldn’t pay for in the past, they’re paying for now. People want to learn from the best and they’re willing to pay to do that. People want to be entertained and they’re willing to pay for it. Whether it’s a professional blogger telling them how they can make money online, or a professional writer giving a well researched account, people will pay.
It’ll be a slow sell, like cable TV was a slow sell in the 70’s. Eventually most of America got on board and sappy Lifetime movies filled every household with a female population. No one wanted to pay to access newspapers or magazines online, but many do. No one wanted to pay to join a forum, but many do. No one wants to pay for content but many do, and many more will.
It’s really not a matter of why or when people will pay for content, because they already are. It’s just a matter of getting it the mainstream.
People will pay for content because they’ve always paid for content.
Credit it where it’s due: This post is inspired by a variety of sources. Originally James Chartrand and I were DM’ing on Twitter about a membership based blogging site. We took the question of whether people should pay for content public and received a variety of answers. See my post “When Should Bloggers Stop Giving it Away” on the BlogWorld blog and James’ post “Are Bloggers Creating Their Own Sweat Shop?”. I’m also inspired to write this post by recent discussions here and at Carson Brackney’s blog regarding quality content.
I think there will be an ongoing market for paid content. However, I think that many outlets will find that they can be more profitably than they currently believe while still offering free material.
A few months ago, I had lunch with a client who runs a business consulting firm specializing in data mining and analytics. He made a very compelling case for newspapers, in particular, to adopt new strategies in terms of online advertising.
I won’t bore everyone with the gory details, but learning more about the ways user data can be collected and utilized to improve ad performance (and, thus, its value to advertisers) was an eye-opener.
Just like we all learned to love cable, many online players will grudgingly come to appreciate the unique opportunities the Internet offers to create profitable ad-supported sites.
“We have no problem shelling out $100 for an ebook or $500 for a webinar.”
My jaw dropped on this sentence. YOU might have no problem, but, to me, that ebook is four pairs of shoes on my kids’ feet. That webinar is more than a month’s groceries. There has better be some seriously compelling sales copy, creator credibility, and implied value to convince me to “shell out” that kind of money. Yes, I will pay for content but I also have to consider the cost of content over the cost of living. There are LOTS of things I wish I could buy that I don’t because I’d rather give my kids beef instead of noodles for dinner.
If everything online required cash a lot of current internet users would be out of the game. Yes, there will be those who can afford to stay in the game, who mightn’t even blink at paying for this or splurging on that, but that is a small percentage of the global community. The rest will go find something else to do or somewhere else to read. In the brick and mortar world the public library continues to let readers have something to read when they don’t want to buy a book.
Yes, more paid-for-content sites will spring up online, just as more paid options for all sorts of formerly free, or advertising supported, industries have been created. But, I can’t think of any that doesn’t still have its free alternatives. Some people pay for cable television, but millions still only watch free-to-air channels.
The question comes down to what you want your community to be. Obviously, a free community is open to everyone, it’s harder to keep out the riff-raff, it’s not exclusive or elite. But it is an open forum for thought and free exchange of ideas, it welcomes the “abundance mentality” (enough for everyone) rather than the “scarcity mentality” (a slice of the pie).
Part of the reason there are paid-for-content sites, free blog content, advertising-based models, sponsor supported, and charity based businesses is because no one way is right for everyone. It comes down to deciding what is the best representation for your business.
In FWJ’s case I think your business is suited to pay-for-content. Those job listings are VERY valuable and should not be free. Creating a walled-off community will decrease the competitiveness of your readers and separate those willing to invest in an easy way to source their leads and those who aren’t. Readers know that those job leads are available in other ways, those who aren’t willing to pay will just hit the pavement.
But I also think you need an element of free content to promote the community atmosphere. After all, I don’t come here for job leads, I come for the conversation.
I think your right that a number of people will continue or start to pay, but i think you underestimate the massive number of people who are simply fed up with the whole model of capitalism.
A simple economics study will show you that with a growing population and increased automation of labor that any model based on profit is doomed to fail if we work toward giving everyone equal access to the resources our culture can provide.
I’m not saying that everything will be free of course, just that the present understanding of money and profit has a limited lifespan considering the technology that will be available within the next hundred years.
Fusion power plants = virtually free power – First starts in 2018, full power in 2026. Others coming on line in virtually every major country within the next 10-15 years.
And that is just the start. Most of the costs associated with print, audio, and video media are eliminated when most of the people are consuming their content on the internet. All those costs associated with the upkeep and employment of hundreds of thousands of building and employees is eliminated. Tons of cost and jobs gone again.
As new ways of doing things comes along, most of those new ways are preoccupied with doing more with less, and in a world of an ever increasing population, profit or capitalism will no longer work like it does today.
We will probably adopt a system where you work at whatever job your assigned or are good at and in return you can within reason purchase whatever you need and want if the world grid can support it.
This is not going to happen overnight and plenty of people will go kicking and screaming into this system. However no one can offer a better solution to this problem that governments and think thanks around the world have been considering since the 1960’s.
I myself have been considering it for two years now and I can’t think of anything different that is truly fair to all of our peoples. And anything less that that is becoming increasingly unacceptable to a growing number of people.
I really am concerned about the lengths some very powerful people will go to prevent this from happening but in the end they will chance their minds or we as species will cease to exist as we do today in favor of a small group of people who have everything while the rest of us slave to give them that incredible lifestyle.
And even that will not last for long.