Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
At present, I can't think of any online blog I would pay to read, regardless of subject.
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I can, but it's a very specialized one: I'd pay for
A List Apart, because a) it's directly relevant to what I do for a living, and b) it has content, and a specific slant on that content, that I can't readily and conveniently find elsewhere, at least not neatly bundled up in one place. But that's one very rare exception.
Most blogs have two fundamental problems selling content:
One is a matter of perception. Many people think, rightly or wrongly, that the content of blogs is superficial if not outright trash. The fact that for every good, useful, valuable blog there are a hundred filled with ramblings from the dogmatic, dimwitted, or downright deranged doesn't help that image, nor do all the linkspam blogs and the "Los Angeles mother finds secret to white teeth" bogus blogs and their ilk. Just the term "blog" alone impresses on the average reader's mind that the content is a) free, and b) crap.
The other is time-based. By their very nature, blogs tend to be focused on the present and the immediate past. That's to be expected in a format whose design goal is, after all, quick and easy updates. While there certainly are exceptions, and excellent ones, I would say that the majority, possibly the overwhelming majority, focus on current events. For example, most science blogs feature new discoveries, or at the very least new angles on old discoveries, not textbook material. This makes older content seem less valuable to readers: it's "old news". Whether or not it
is valuable or not doesn't enter into it much. As always, marketing is about perception. People have been trained to expect blog content to be both current and ephemeral, and that's a massive obstacle to overcome when trying to get them to shell out their cash for old content, no matter how good it is.
Which is why I think this fellow's idea is not going to fly. A conventional website offering celebrity interviews as paid content? Maybe. The porn industry has done fairly well with the public/private site system. But a blog? It seems to me it has numerous disadvantages, ranging from buyer perception to site organization, and no possible advantage, save perhaps for ease of setup. If ease of setup is the guiding factor in designing one's business model, that doesn't speak well of the commitment needed to make a success of it.