{"id":2681,"date":"2013-03-27T02:35:39","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T07:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=2681"},"modified":"2013-03-27T02:35:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T07:35:40","slug":"paywalls-arent-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2013\/03\/27\/paywalls-arent-bad","title":{"rendered":"Paywalls aren&#8217;t bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/byte\/8591348526\/\" title=\"Color! by byte, on Flickr\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8521\/8591348526_bb157c4b4a_n.jpg?resize=320%2C320\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" alt=\"Color!\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\"\/><\/a>The New York Times paywall has become <a href=\"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/2013\/03\/25\/new-york-times-closes-another-loophole-in-its-digital-paywall\/\">less<\/a> porous. The idea of reading free content is going away and I think this is great for content producers.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t start paying for the New York Times till sometime last year, and I didn&#8217;t start paying for the Financial Times till sometime this year and the reason is simple: their paywalls were rather porous. 20 articles a month with free headlines, the ability to click from social media, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I love the two publications above and wanted to read it on the go. This is where the subscriptions started making more sense. Believe it or not, I like the physical paper better and do get it at most hotels that I stay at, but for those periods that I don&#8217;t, I crave for it. Hence the subscriptions to both.<\/p>\n<p>Monthly\/yearly <a href=\"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/2013\/03\/25\/andrew-sullivan-rolls-out-1-99month-payment-option-for-the-dish\/\">payment options<\/a> are being tried out by Andrew Sullivan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thisweekinstartups.com\/\">This Week in Startups<\/a> has the concept of a producer to keep the show alive. This idea isn&#8217;t new though &#8211; it was probably conceived by Adam Curry on the <a href=\"http:\/\/nashownotes.com\/\">No Agenda Show<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s not forget all sites that carry PayPal tip jar&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Why do I think its great for NYTimes\/FT\/etc. to start charging? Because its clear good quality content cannot be provided for and be created for free.<\/p>\n<p>Once Netizens begin to start paying for content from these major players, it will help them understand that they have to pay for content for smaller\/niche players. Call this <strong>conditioning<\/strong>. It can only mean that more people will enjoy paying for <a href=\"http:\/\/byliner.com\/\">Byliner<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/hackermonthly.com\/\">Hacker Monthly<\/a>\u00a0or <a href=\"http:\/\/the-magazine.org\/\">The Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course there&#8217;s no perfect login solution today. When I find a link from Twitter on my mobile that goes to Malaysiakini (which I also happily pay for), I see a paywall. I know I can head to The Malaysian Insider to find the same news without login details. I expect authentication technology will improve in the near future.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, this is an exciting space to be in these days. Publishing is changing right in front of our eyes with a long-term view on being sustainable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times paywall has become less porous. The idea of reading free content is going away and I think this is great for content producers. I didn&#8217;t start paying for the New York Times till sometime last year, and I didn&#8217;t start paying for the Financial Times till sometime this year and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[1530,1529],"class_list":["post-2681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-general","tag-monetization","tag-paywalls"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-Hf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}