Do you think it’s fair to charge for services online? According to this editorial by Steven Hodson on Mashable, it is - and you better get used to doing it.
Advertisements have traditionally paid for online services to remain free for their users, but as more people brag about iron-clad popup blockers or their superior ability to tune out online ads, how long before advertisers start pulling ads in favor of other more reliable avenues of brand awareness?
With presumably fewer advertising dollars coming in, users are either going to have to subsidize the service themselves or risk losing forever the time, energy and data that was invested in the company.
The biggest point he makes is that we shouldn’t be whining at all for having to pay for online services and really, he’s probably right. Plain and simple, why should we feel that we’re “owed” anything for free? Space costs money whether online or not.
If it ever came down to that, I know that there’s certain sites I would be willing to contribute to. I already pay $24.95 a year for Flickr pro and I’m sure I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for Facebook and a bit less for Twitter, but I definitely wouldn’t be forking over anything to join new startups that I wasn’t 100% positive would be worth it.
How much (if anything) would you be willing to pay for the online services you use everyday?
July 21, 2008 at 11:23 am
Surprised to hear you value Twitter over Facebook. I’d be willing to pay more for FB than T/er all day.
July 21, 2008 at 11:59 am
Agree that I would pay more for Facebook. ALthough have just discovered Twitteriffic (yes, I know I’m behind the times) via my iPhone, and that might all change.
I do pay for Flickr, and have no issue with paying for applications that make my life easier. But I would really need to believe in the service before forking over cash to a business that might go bust within a matter of months.
Oh, and it’s very difficult to get consumers to pay for anything that they previously got for free. Watch the hordes migrate somewhere new if FB ever tried to charge a pay-to-play fee…
July 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Sorry, terrible mixed use of tenses there. English is barely my first language on a Monday morning.
July 21, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Sorry, no. I meant a more reasonable amount as in less money… Sorry it wasn’t clear! Fixed :)
July 21, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I think I’d be up the proverbial creek. I use Blogger now precisely because it’s free. I’d love my own domain name and all the great widgets and applications of WordPress, but as a SAHM with none of my “own” income, I couldn’t justify the extra expenses my “hobby” would generate.
July 21, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I would definitely pay for Facebook. I’ve found it to be so valuable in the weirdest ways. I would HAVE to pay for two MySpace pages. One is my recording business and the other is our band’s page. I would gladly give up my personal page.
July 22, 2008 at 12:16 am
I would be totally alright with paying for Facebook. Though I eschewed it for years, it is undoubtedly a great social networking site. If I had to pay for MySpace, I would delete my page. I mainly keep it up for the handful of friends on there that aren’t on the Facebook. I think the only info I have up is an lolcat and a Flight of the Conchords video. I’m elusive like that.
July 22, 2008 at 2:39 am
With you on Flickr, I would pay up to $60 a year for that, I reckon - especially if you treat it like storage space incase your laptop and external hard drives ever die, like me!
Would pay maybe $20 a year for Facebook, just because I’d feel left out not being on it - it’s so exclusive, in that if your friends are having a party, they only invite people on FB now, and don’t even bother with the mail-out.
Having said all that, I am beginning to despise PayPal, and really, we do pay so much to use it - I recently sold £900 worth of stuff on eBay (it was a MASSIVE clear-out), and PayPal took around £110 of that off me, as fees - and I haven’t even received the eBay fees yet! So yes, we do pay for PayPal and eBay, because they have the monopoly unfortunately.