March 4th, 2007

Blog Herald Column: Could Blogging Adopt A Paid Content Business Model?

by Scott Karp

A friend of mine, Sahar Sarid, posted an interesting assertion about the future of blog business models (Sahar has an elegant mind, and his new blog Conceptualist is sure to be a great read):

Newspapers – Free (or no business model) (pre 1704), Advertising (1704, The Boston News-Letter), Subscription (1893, Frank Munsey)
Radio – Free (or no business model), Advertising (1909, Charles Herrold)), Subscription (XM, Sirius)
Television – Free (or no business model), Advertising (1941), Subscription (Cable TV, HBO, DirecTV, Showtime)
Blogging – Free (or no business model), Advertising (Federated Media, Adsense), ……. ?It’s… inevitable.

Sahar’s historical analysis is certainly compelling. If other media ultimately adopted a paid content model, why not blogging? I agree that there is fairly strong case that some blogs may ultimately be able to adopt a paid model, but there is an equally strong case why most blogs will not.

Read the rest.

Topics: Publishing 2.0

  • In a free market, you pay what something is worth to you.

    Blogs with industry specific information that can't be easily gotten elsewhere, and that potentially makes you money, will be worth paying a lot for.

    Blogs with useful information that can be found elsewhere for free might be worth paying a little for if they are very well written.

    Popular culture, humor, or gossip blogs will always be ad supported.

    Cat blogs will always be free.

    Most of the top blogs being written now fall into the second category. Would you really pay for TechCrunch or A List Apart? Not when there is an infinite number of other blogs lined up to provide similar information for free. Even if they're not quite as good.

    If some kind of micropayment system can finally be ironed out with wide adoption, then I can see online subscriptions working. I'd probably pay a couple dollars for a really good blog if it just required a click to do so.

  • I'm sure this is already happening in lots of places. We've always delivered our b-t-b blog Publishers Lunch primarily as an e-mail newsletter. Early on we created a paid subscription companion web site with data and interactive opportunities that complemented the free newsletter, and added a searchable archive, job board, etc. But subscriptions (and company site licenses) really ramped up when we bifurcated the newsletter into an ever-longer paid version--bundled in with the larger web site subscription--and a shorter but still highly valued free version.

    Conversions have risen every single month for years, and our overall circulation/domination of our little community grows all the time between the paid and free services. As you point out in the longer Blog Herald post, there are some qualities that make a blog more suited to paid subscribers. Just as advertising works meaningfully for only some blogs.

    I don't think there's one answer for everyone. We've always tried to experiment with/establish multiple revenue streams (e-mail ads; site ads; classifieds/job board; site and e-mail subscriptions; live events; print spin-offs).

  • I think blogs that operate a paid for view model can't then be classed as traditional blogs.

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