You're right. Those newspapers have been selling subscriptions for years and years from magic. I think they cast a spell on people when they call and it makes them fork over money to read the stuff they are interested in. Don't even get me started on magazines. Bunch of damn hoodoo goddesses running that joint.
A new anybody can start anything if they decide to. If I want to go sell an ebook I can do it. If I want to type that ebook in a blog and charge for it well I just charged for a blog. It's just a trendy phrase for a content website, paying for it is no different than anything else.
If it was < $1 and they showed snippets of incredible information and writing style, I might be willing to fork over 59 cents or 99 cents to read a couple posts, just because it seems like so little money. Other than that, I don't think the world is ready to pay for something associated with the word "BLOG".
I can only see this working for sex related stuff, if the blog was that good it would be able to make money from other avenues. In my opinion magazines and newspapers offer a completely different experience from blogs, I might sit and read through a magazine but would never sit reading that much text on one blog. Blogs are great for providing quickly assessable content and up to the minute news in a way that print cannot and have replaced newspapers and magazines in that respect for most people. Everyone is different, but for me if a blog stopped you to ask for payment it would no longer be quickly assessable content and I would never visit again.
It seems to me that if it blocked content to non-subscribers, it would also have a difficult time with site promotion, since you can be sure that Googlebot and friends aren't going to pay you anything... not to mention all the feed reading services like Bloglines...
Yep. But most of them didn't start out as paid and this is a blog - they are a dime a dozen. You either better be famous or what you're offering better be famous before you even think about this.
I don't know where everyone got this logic from but it's a bit silly. If I can go make an ebook on how to ___________ and sell it for $50 you think it's harder to put that content in a blog and charge $50? It's a different format of information, nothing more, nothing less. If you aren't able to sell something for $50 then it doesn't matter which distribution method you choose.
The majority of e-books work on the concept that the author has “Specialised Knowledge†that will make you succeed in what ever field and make more money. So e-books sell on the concept that they are not a cost, but and investment. That’s quite different to a blog, unless you mean to serialise an e-book, there might be people misguided enough to buy into that. I can see paid content working with sex and famous people best, general blogs that provide some quick entertainment to office workers in their lunch hour would struggle to make people pay.
Actually there is. All you have to do is password protect the blog site or directory and only give passwords to paid subscribers. It's not a good idea but it's certainly possible.
My first response is no...wouldn't pay to read a blog since there are millions of them around. I could find what I was looking for from those millions. But on second thoughts if the blog had incredibly unique content, if I liked the writing style of the blogger, and if the price was resonable, then I would pay. Didn't Stephen King try this pay-and-read formula some time ago? Now if he or Grisham or some other famous author wrote their next book as a pay-and-read blog then I would surely pay.