Content Vendor Best Practices: Busting up Fee vs. Free
This Briefing puts to rest longstanding myths about the market for paid content on the Internet. It reveals the online paid content market to be over $50 billion, 35 times larger than commonly reported. Analysts and the media often misunderstand and underestimate the content market, believing there is a free versus fee dichotomy. In addition to exploring the origins of the myths, this Briefing explodes them with profiles on more than 100 successful content providers focused on blended business models that create value for their users. The examples include many companies that are targeting content for specific markets and narrow user needs. The either/or, free versus paid argument is like 'The Emperor's New Clothes' in reverse: The emperor is actually fully dressed in revenue, but the loyal subjects keep insisting that he's naked. Successful models are about 'both/and': both advertising supported and user fee supported; both subscription and transactional; both fixed product bundles and pick-and-choose user customization. For commercial content vendors, the Briefing provides clear and concrete examples to show that there is indeed a huge market for content that includes both for-pay and blended models.
