Jack William Bell's Journal: Free as in?

'The End of Free' is a Weblog covering the change of commercial sites on the web from free, to fee. (In other words, no more free beer, but free speech hopefully has a future.)

'The End of Free' has some pretty good links. For example, this link to an article on 'How to Avoid the Top 5 Subscription Marketing Mistakes' where ContentBiz asked veteran copywriter Don Hauptman to review a variety of typical subscription sites, and share tips that could help everyone sell more. (Piro should read that one. Not that I think he is doing anything wrong, but every little bit helps.)

Still I have to wonder if the 'End of Free' really means the end of most commercial sites altogether. Not because they must switch to a fee, but because there are so many high-quality free alternatives (subsidized by the content creators themselves, often as a hobby) that people will not pay fees. In other words there is little or no market on the Internet for commercial content period!

I don't know if this is a 'tragedy of the commons', or more an emergent quality of low-cost content delivery. But I am guessing there isn't much room out there for fee-based content. For proof of my thesis I point to 'The End of Free' itself, which is 'free' (as in beer and speech)...