Clearly no one would ever pay to be able to use google to search, yet we all value it enormously.
Clearly, Google had better ways to make money; when you have something as excellent as Google, you have options. But don't take as your thesis that "even Google had to go free".
I'm simply pointing out that some services don't really work too well as a 'paid' model.
Also you've got the fact that some of your competition is going to be free. If you want to now charge users directly, you have to be at least 10 times as good, or be offering something seriously different to make them pay.
I'm still firmly in the freemium camp.
1. Make something, get people to use it
2. Grow, make profit from advertising (Stay lean, keep costs low)
3. Once you're big enough, some subset of your users will be willing to pay for extra features
If you instead go for paid only, I don't think you can reach anywhere near the same audience.
"But $64MM is fuck-all compared to the billions it makes now!" Of course that's true, but that's besides the point. Almost any product company number is going to suck compared to what Google can post now. I'm not arguing that Google should be a free service. I'm saying they had options, and it wasn't necessarily between "free or die".
Things that are "paid only" don't seem to scale quite as well.
Of course if/when a decent micropayment model emerges from ISPs, then it'll likely change everything.
I read that, and thought "That makes absolutely no sense, because they would have failed if they had not been free".
Please explain how Google would have grown to its current size, had it charged users to use its search.
Google chose to be free, because the alternative would have been certain failure.
Having faith in charging is realizing you will and CAN lose 95% of your audience and still make a decent living, simply by charging.
If it was a simple case of having something tacked onto my ISP bill, then I'd be far more likely to pay for things. I think that's an area ripe for development. Why ISPs haven't attacked it yet I don't know.
Ad supported is still a pretty good model though and will be around forever. It does depend on who your users are though.
It could just be a very simple setup:
1. webapp notices you're on ISP A
2. webapp asks ISP A to bill you $3/month
3. you get an email from your ISP asking for authorization
4. you click the link and it's added to your billIt works just fine and no need to get the thousands of ISPs that exist involved, which is incredibly messy.
Going the ISP route is far cleaner, since they already have a billing relationship with the customer.
There was a time that this would have worked, but I think there are too many people that aren't tied to a single physical location for their internet services. And we haven't all switched to something provided by a cell company.
I Don't think it's quite that clear.
The fact is though, they make far more from advertising than they could ever hope to make charging.
Perhaps it's your own personal situation, but I would certainly pay for something as high quality as google is. Hell, I pay for fricken cable TV, and google is much more valuable than hockey games and the the odd HBO drama.
I think if you're going to ask "What would I pay for this?" you have to be honest with yourself and with your product. Are you the only guy you know without a cellphone? Are you living everyday on Ramen? Sometimes, "you" needs to be qualified. Assuming you are average though, it is a good start.
The web doesn't have such luxuries. Payment on the web still pretty much sucks. Especially for low value recurring fees.
With iPhone apps, you can pretty much trust Apple. They'll take your money and pass it on. If there's an issue, you take it up with Apple. Apple are the only ones who have your credit card number. That's why it works so well.
We need something similar for the web, managed by the ISPs, if we're to make paid for content more viable.