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Free vs. Paid Content

The New York Times reports on "Adding Fees and Fences on Media Sites"

"A leading evangelist for the coming of a new era is Rupert Murdoch, who has said he envisions a not-too-distant day when all of the News Corporation’s news properties, including Fox News Channel, The Times of London and The New York Post, charge online."

Rupert Murdoch has discussed setting up a group of media properties that would require payment to access their bundle of content, or possibly setting up an exclusive partnership with a single search engine like Microsoft that would pay Murdoch for the rights to scan his company's news and entertainment content.

There is no doubt that traditional newspapers and publishers have lost profits due to the free dissemination of content online. But online startups like Huffington Post have profitted with their low overhead approach.

"Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, predicted that much of the talk of media’s mining the Web for new revenue would never become reality — and that if it did, free sites like hers would benefit. Some of the plans now being laid might work, she said, but many of them would just alienate the Internet users who click from one site to another, wherever links and their curiosity take them."

Solutions to this issue may vary widely. We've built websites for people that charged for content and those that provided it for free to encourage advertising or sales of related products.

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