Paid Content: Should Your Website Be Free?
Major media companies are trying to move away from free to paid content via subscription. How well that will fare remains to be seen. Is it better to have 100,000 visitors per day to free content and try to advertise on that content to monetize it or have 1,000 paying subscribers read the same content?
“There’s not enough advertising in the world to make all the websites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people coming to our websites but paying.” – Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch contends that others get a free ride when your content is freely accessible online because they can then borrow/steal it for their own sites. In other words, you’re subsidizing competitors’ business operations. This view runs counter to 99% of the blogosphere…but 99% of the blogosphere is broke…and Murdoch isn’t.
What remains to be seen is whether the content provided by a few sources are so valuable that you will pay for it rather than look for free alternatives on the Web.
For those looking for profit, a hybrid model seems to be the way to go. Deliver some content for free. Paid membership for the rest.
Apply the Zeigarnik Effect and other methods to encourage additional reading that requires payment to find out (to borrow from the late Paul Harvey), “the rest of the story.”
Regardless of the technologies used (and a no-index robots.txt file isn’t going to be enough), paid content is going to leak out into the marketplace for free. Will there be enough paying customers to maintain profitability despite the leaks?
Murdoch is going to find out.
Goldman Sachs: Welfare Weasel Tries to Silence Blogger Free Speech
Isn’t it nice to know that Welfare Weasel Goldman Sachs appreciates the government bailout that it received (your tax dollars) so much that it has apparently hired a Wall Street law firm to crush a blogger who happens to be critical of its misconduct?
Your tax dollars are being used for this nonsense in addition to those executive perqs?
The blogger, Mike Morgan at GoldmanSachs666.com, isn’t intimidated. Rather than wait, he went on the offense and sued Goldman Sachs in federal district court.
It will be interesting to see what happens. Goldman Sachs probably figured its deep pockets, combined with a big law firm, would scare the blogger into silence. To do this, Goldman Sachs asserts the blogger has infringed on its trademark and engaged in unfair competition. Anyone who views Morgan’s site (including the prominent disclaimer) will not mistake it in any way for a Goldman Sachs’ venture or competitor but recognize it for what it is – a place to vent about the bad practices that Goldman Sachs has engaged in.
Goodbye free speech? If we can interpret the U.S. Constitution to authorize the President to give your tax dollars to the incompetent, the next logical step would be to start eliminating those pesky parts of the Bill of Rights that allow criticism of those second-handers who feed off the government.
Speaking of which, let’s highlight some of the Goldman Sachs incest that enabled it and its corporate cronies to take your tax money to spend as they see fit.
- President Bush’s last U.S. Treasury Secretary? Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr., former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.
- John Stevens Corzine – Governor of New Jersey, former U.S. Senator, and yes, former Chairman and co-CEO of Goldman Sachs.
- Robert Rubin – Before becoming President Clinton’s U.S. Treasury Secretary, Rubin was, you guessed it, the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
These are just a few examples. Government “service” has served Goldman Sachs and it cronies well. If you look to who has benefited from crisis bailouts, ranging from Mexico in the 1990s to the current TARP fiasco, you’ll find that Goldman Sachs and the other corporate welfare weasels it deals with (AIG, Citigroup, etc.) have done extremely well getting your money from Uncle Sam without any strings attached.
In short, Goldman Sachs deserves contempt for its attempt to suppress blogger free speech.
As for taking your money (using the government as tax collector), you can decide what should be a fitting punishment.
