Comments on: Up against the pay wall http://www.adotas.com/2009/10/up-against-the-pay-wall/ Where Interactive Advertising Begins Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:04:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Frans http://www.adotas.com/2009/10/up-against-the-pay-wall/#comment-791300 Frans Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:04:55 +0000 http://www.adotas.com/2009/10/up-against-the-pay-wall/#comment-791300 Hi Thimoty, Thanks for the article. I agree with you for 90%. But the discussion has the wrong starting point. Everybody is starting with the newspaper sector and how they can solve their problems with a paymentsystem. We should start the discussion with the fact that free doens't exist. Not in the real world and not on the internet. Somebody somewhere is paying the bills for websites that are now free. You-Tube is a good example. Credit Suisse (business bank) did an canservative estimation on their results. Google invested $ 3.2 bln in You-Tube and recieved revenues from advertising of $ 600 mio. That's a loss of $ 2.6 bln. And You-tube isn't the only website that is making losses. So there will come a time when somebody will say "enough is enough" and pulls the plug. The public will then learn (again) that free doens't exist. The main problem with internet is the huge amount of information that is available. It's becoming allmost impossible to make a good distinction between relevant and irrelevant information and between reliable and unreliable information. Paying for information brings a quality label, when something is free it's probably irrelevant and unreliable. That's added value and something the public is willing to pay for. So far we have established that nothing in life is really free and people are willing to pay for relevant and reliable information. Now the pricing issue becomes rellevant. Every current discussion or article brings in subscriptions to websites. Wrong! People don't want subscribtions, they want freedom! They are willing to make a one time payment for relevant and reliable information. In the beginning they will not be willing to pay much because in their perception it's free. So let's start with micro-payments less then a cent. (I'm assuming offcourse that a paymentsystem that can handle usch small amounts will be / come available.) There we are, we have relevant and reliable information, the public understands that nothing in life is free, they don't need to take a subscription and the price is less then they are used to. This will start the transfer from a "free" internet to a mature internet. An issue that I haven't brought up here is green internet. The knowledge that websites are polutors is starting to spread, in the near future websites will be forced to act upon this. and this will not be free. Check http://micropaymentsinternet.blogspot.com/ for more on micro-payments. Frans Hi Thimoty,

Thanks for the article. I agree with you for 90%. But the discussion has the wrong starting point. Everybody is starting with the newspaper sector and how they can solve their problems with a paymentsystem.
We should start the discussion with the fact that free doens’t exist. Not in the real world and not on the internet. Somebody somewhere is paying the bills for websites that are now free. You-Tube is a good example. Credit Suisse (business bank) did an canservative estimation on their results. Google invested $ 3.2 bln in You-Tube and recieved revenues from advertising of $ 600 mio. That’s a loss of $ 2.6 bln. And You-tube isn’t the only website that is making losses. So there will come a time when somebody will say “enough is enough” and pulls the plug. The public will then learn (again) that free doens’t exist.
The main problem with internet is the huge amount of information that is available. It’s becoming allmost impossible to make a good distinction between relevant and irrelevant information and between reliable and unreliable information. Paying for information brings a quality label, when something is free it’s probably irrelevant and unreliable. That’s added value and something the public is willing to pay for.
So far we have established that nothing in life is really free and people are willing to pay for relevant and reliable information.
Now the pricing issue becomes rellevant. Every current discussion or article brings in subscriptions to websites. Wrong! People don’t want subscribtions, they want freedom! They are willing to make a one time payment for relevant and reliable information. In the beginning they will not be willing to pay much because in their perception it’s free. So let’s start with micro-payments less then a cent. (I’m assuming offcourse that a paymentsystem that can handle usch small amounts will be / come available.)
There we are, we have relevant and reliable information, the public understands that nothing in life is free, they don’t need to take a subscription and the price is less then they are used to. This will start the transfer from a “free” internet to a mature internet.
An issue that I haven’t brought up here is green internet. The knowledge that websites are polutors is starting to spread, in the near future websites will be forced to act upon this. and this will not be free.

Check http://micropaymentsinternet.blogspot.com/ for more on micro-payments.

Frans

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