Paying for it - subscription websites

[AtW]

Subscription business model for CUK forum:

1. Free account: 5 posts a day, pre-moderated.

2. £10 per month: unlimited posts, no delay between messages, custom title, posts in Light Relief counts as double

3. £50 per month: you get up to 20 sockies

4. £100 - you can post under sasguru account

[OwlHoot]

Subscription business model for CUK forum:

1. Free account: 5 posts a day, pre-moderated.

2. £10 per month: unlimited posts, no delay between messages, custom title, posts in Light Relief counts as double

3. £50 per month: you get up to 20 sockies

4. £100 - you can post under sasguru account

5. Retrospective payment for number of posts already notched up.

[OwlHoot]

I vaguely remember hearing something on the news last week about one of the Rubert Murdoch paper sites that's going to start charging for access.

Recently I've had one forum that I'm a member of demand that you pay a hefty fee to sign up or bugger off and today another one followed suit and frankly I'm concerned that a lot of content sites might follow the same pattern.

Anyone else concerned?

The only way it has a hope in hell of working is if multiple media outlets, e.g. Sky, BBC, etc charge micropayments via a third party such as Google or PayPal.

The idea of having to organise a separate account with each content provider is ludicrously complicated and inconvenient - How many would bother?

[bobhope]

Perhaps if CUK went the way of paid subs, then it'd put off a lot of the trolls and timewasters, and leave serious folks as the only ones who'd bother to subscribe ?

Wouldn't it be called the PCG then?

[ctdctd]

Wouldn't it be called the PCG then?

I don't know as you have to pay to look at the PCG forums so I never have!

[Troll]

Perhaps if CUK went the way of paid subs, then it'd put off a lot of the trolls and timewasters, and leave serious folks as the only ones who'd bother to subscribe ?

trouble is "serious folks" tend to be crashing bores

[dang65]

A big flaw in this concept, when it comes to news websites at least, is that most people don't pay a subscription for their newspaper at the moment anyway, or even buy one every day. And they don't go to the newspaper website every day either. They'd be paying a subscription for something they don't even use regularly.

Like everyone else, the newspaper publishers have to come up with new ways to get people to buy the physical newspaper - which they already do a lot of the time, with "free" DVDs and CDs and various serial voucher collection schemes. But it would be good if they did it by improving the content and layout to the point where a newspaper was a truly entertaining item, instead of mainly being a load of ranting by obscure columnists, which is the sort of thing anyone can write, as is proved routinely by blogs and forum posts.

As with the downloadable music business, they are concentrating on extracting money from a public which is not even getting the same quality and value which they used to in the days of vinyl. This is just irritating to most people, certainly people from the internet generation. We are depicted as demanding free everything, but the point is that most people already contribute their own content for free - photos, videos, blogs, technical articles, fiction and music... it's all put up there for no profit and a lot of it is very good quality (and the rubbish is free too, which doesn't apply when it's flogged to us by the music business).

When people are able to do something for themselves, the professionals who provided that service previously go out of business unless they can improve their service beyond reach. Even if the professional does a better job, it's not so much better that people will pay for it if they don't need to. That applies to journalism as well, and they should sort themselves out before whining so much.

[Not So Wise]

I vaguely remember hearing something on the news last week about one of the Rubert Murdoch paper sites that's going to start charging for access.

Actually he is going to try to make all of them pay sites

And hopefully (most likely) it will bomb

Would never pay for a site myself unless it actually "paid for it's self twice over" aka what the site cost me I would earn/save twice over what membership cost me (which basically rules out pretty much all newspaper sites)

[The Lone Gunman]

Wouldn't it be called the PCG then?

There are just as many trolls and time wasters on the PCG fora as there are here. Over there they do not always know that they are a troll or a timewaster. I have seen any number of clueless twats over there insisting black is white when giving advice. I generally find the serious advice threads here tend to be left to those who know (less so recently).

[MPwannadecentincome]

1. Free account: 5 posts a day, pre-moderated.

hmm then the subscribers will be subsidising the free accounts that need manual pre-moderation, don't think that'll happen