It Is Not the Question of Users Willing to Pay for Online Content, It Is the Question of Publishers Willing to Charge

Yesterday both the blogosphere and traditional media were engaged in a discussion about the rumors published in the New York Magazine about one of the largest newspapers, New York Times, finally being close to making the decision of beginning to charge online users for their news. This is hardly actually news given that we’ve already heard such rumors before and we still don’t get any clarity about the model to be used here - or when this model will be implemented.

But the idea of NYT joining those brave publishers that have already chosen to use some sort of a pay wall for their online content is something that cannot leave any online publishers indifferent - so we get another animated discussion and plenty of opinions pro and contra the idea of paid content.

Of course the question that people are now asking their readers everywhere (and all the publishers considering such an opportunity must think about heavily) is simple: are users willing to pay? Everyone is concerned that such initiatives will never result in anything useful to the publishers - and the entire web industry. And the reason is simple: publishers are afraid that users will simply not want to pay for online content because our habit is that everything that is available online should be available for free.

I’ve been to too many quarrels already trying to make my statement that publishers may venture into the field of paid-for content - and eventually the efforts will result in users agreeing to pay for the content provided that the content is actually truly useful and offers enough value for the money. And I know that the discussion is probably a never-ending one so the publishers will hardly ever achieve any agreement with content consumers on this dilemma of paid-for versus free content.

But while I don’t want to get into this discussion again because I know that web users are simply not ready to admit they are willing to consume their news and other information for a fee, I still think there’s one aspect that we should all take into account - and New York Times choosing some sort of a subscription model will influence this particular aspect heavily. My point of view here is simple and straightforward: it is not the issue of whether users are willing to pay for content, it is instead the issue of whether publishers are willing to charge for it.

Of course we can keep talking about how unwilling online users are to pay for information online - and such users will keep insisting they are unwilling to pay. After all, it is not really reasonable to admit that you are willing to pay for some information if this will prompt a publisher to make you pay for what you currently get for free. But why not look at it from another angle? Is there a way to make people pay even if they are unwilling to do so and are not ready to comprehend the concept just yet?

What I am talking about is that actually there’s a very clear way to making people pay irrespective of their willingness to do so (or admit to be willing): if every single publisher (or at least all the most respectful publishers) choose to begin charging for their content, consumers of such content will simply have no other choice but pay.

Just imagine that all the news and valuable resources online can only be accessed if you pay some subscription fee - and only those things that you will hardly ever need or want to read are available for free. Will you still choose not to pay and avoid consuming any valuable and useful content online in the future? My guess here is that most people will decide that they are willing to pay if the content we are talking about here poses enough value for them.

At that of course I understand that the fee should be reasonable and should also be very easy to pay - probably even as part of what you pay to your ISP. Say, you pay $20 to your ISP a month and the ISP will send some $5 to an account from where the money will be distributed to all the publishers based on how many visitors each of them has. I know this may be difficult to implement but given that this can be viewed as a basis for an entirely new approach to online media monetization, it could be worth the time and efforts required to produce a comprehensive system like this.

Actually this discussion has tons of things in common with what we are doing with CancelAds - providing a simple tool for web publishers to be able to begin charging for their content and for ad-free availability of such content to paying subscribers. And while this is a challenging road and plenty of efforts and resources are needed to finally achieve an overall understanding among web users that content is not really meant to be free, I still think that the more publishers choose to go this way (developing their own systems or using third-party tools like the one we offer), the better for the overall industry.