Three Checkboxes To Get People To Pay For Content?

from the pick-two-of-three dept

Jon sends in one of the more amusing opinion pieces written about conditions needed to get people to actually pay for content, written in the Guardian by Paul Carr. You have to get past the drunken bar fight part (which is what makes the article amusing) to the theory, which is that to get people to pay for content, it needs to hit at least two of the following three conditions:

1. An experience that can't be replaced anywhere else for free.
2. Making the purchase incredibly easy (key point: the real "cost" is price + hassle, so lowering the hassle factor is like dropping the cost)
3. At the end, the buyer actually "owns" the purchase, rather than just "accessing" content.

It's definitely an interesting theory -- built mainly off of looking at the success of Tapulous and its iPhone apps. However, I'm not convinced that these three conditions actually will work in the long run. I think they can absolutely work in the short-run, however. The first point, for example, only works so long as the content can't be replicated by others. That's not really true of something like a video game. Either someone can figure out a way to copy it, or even taking unauthorized copying out of the equation, someone else can come up with a similar game and offer it for less (or even free, using a different business model).

The second point definitely does make sense. People absolutely are willing to pay for convenience... but, again, that second point goes away if the first point isn't there. That is, no matter how hassle free the buying process might be, if the experience can be substituted by a free option, then the ease of the buying process probably doesn't matter too much.

The third point is also somewhat in dispute. I do agree that if people are paying for "content," it's important that they get some sort of ownership and control over it, but I actually think that there's something to paying for access, depending on what that access is. Access to content? Eh. Access to people, however... is quite different.

So, while I'm not convinced that these three checkboxes work, it still makes for an amusing and worthwhile read if you're trying to understand these sorts of business models.

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

The Chasm Between Saying You'd Pay For YouTube Content And Actually Paying For YouTube Content

from the that's-one-grand-canyon dept

There's been a bit of a discussion going on around a recent survey saying that 11% of people would pay for YouTube content if it meant they could avoid the advertisements. That has people estimating how much money YouTube may be leaving on the table, by not offering a "premium" tier. However, before people start counting this non-existent revenue, there are a few important things to consider. First up, this is a survey of what people say they would do, which often has little bearing on what people actually would do. Many people might think they would pay, but when the option comes up... they don't bother. Already it's pretty easy to avoid the ads on YouTube if you want, so the "cost" of seeing the ads isn't really that high -- and a subscription would have to compete with the ease of just installing an adblocker. On top of that, this discussion ignores how the rest of the market would react. If you were running one of the smaller video hosting sites out there, and YouTube announced a premium service, you would start promoting the hell out of the fact that you could get the same content without paying at your site. While it's true that some people would pay, it would probably serve to boost up some of YouTube's competitors and potentially stunt YouTube's growth. That's not to say there couldn't be premium services that make sense -- but they're probably more for the producers of content, rather than the viewers.

18 Comments | Leave a Comment..