Some points
a) an annual subscription of a small amount is soon forgotten
once paid.
b) once you are closely coupled with a site through contacts, entering information or whatever , you have a hysteresis there, and inertia that may prevent you leaving and having to do it all again. This is why many people work with old version of software or OS - because
it is set up how they like it and it works.
c) internet addicts will tear their hair out if deprived of their fix for too long for example if shut out of their favourite site.
Subscriptions are one model, but by no means the only one. People will pay if they perceive what they are being offered represents value for money for them to do what they want to do. Features, facilities, resources and content all contribute. Obviously if you are playing a part in generating the content then you expect that to be considered, and what you are being offered must outweigh the subscription plus the cost of your perceived contribution.
If for example I was interested in webcams and I was a birdwatcher, I may mount a webcam in my garden and allow it to be access by other users from birdienet.com or whatever. In return I would get access to everyone elses webcams. How much would people pay for this ? No clue, it's not my idea, but if I was an avid ornithologist (and there are lots of them) then I may well pay if the coverage was better than available through other commercial sources and included a range of sponsored cameras in exotic locations....
BigD
Quote:
Originally Posted by peachy  I think you are basing your comments on whether or not you would pay and how you assess value. Heavy users of Facebook have, in my experience, quite different personalities.
Any defection to another service would be harmful to Facebook, maybe if they charged tomorrow a many people would not and the hangers on would find the amount of content reducing. You would probably see another site like Google's offering (whos name I forget) grow simply because everybody is on it. Would everybody renew their annual subscription second year running? We have seen this with myspace.
The problem is in trying to charge people to generate content for you.
For some technical forums I am a member of I would probably pay up to 100chf a year if it was a requirement to view content but then I would need some kind of guaranetee they were able to maintain the same level of content without people being able to generate that content for free which is what we are talking about here. If you offer something for free you have to offer something additional for paid especially in a user content driven website. |