Are you willing to pay for online content?

On February 6, 2010 Mitch Joel wrote a post entitled “There Is Nothing Wrong With Making Money” – you can read it here.

Some people think that content – all content – should be free from start to end. This includes people providing content, as well as those consuming that content. I think that’s ridiculous. A lot of content should be provided for free, as is the case currently, but with all types of media and content moving online, it’s inevitable that premium and selected content pieces should carry a price tag, even if only a nominal one.

This discussion has been becoming more and more frequent, because it’s becoming more and more important – for all concerned.

Mitch says:

Free is great, but at a certain point that well runs dry. People are willing to pay for things like access, unique content, premiums, artefacts, etc… Creating platforms that add value to a community is worthwhile (and worth the cost). No one ever said that everything in Social Media has to be free… and even free has a cost associated to it.

I totally agree with this. In fact, let me share the comment I posted on Mitch’s blog post:

I agree that money should be made online. I particularly favour the Freemium model. I plan to apply this to my seminars and webinars, as well as online content. Right now what I give for free, which I see as sharing and adding value, is totally separate to the things I charge for. I need to change that.

I like what Andrew Warner has done with his interviews on Mixergy.com. First all his video interviews were free (and they’re about an hour long each). A few days ago I discovered that interviews are now only free to view for a week. Anything older than a week can only be viewed under a paying membership. I like that model. It allows people who don’t want to pay 1 week to view all the videos, and it allows serious visitors the opportunity to pay for content to view and browse at leisure.

What do you think? Are you prepared to pay from premium online content?

Photo credit: stevendepolo