Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Are you ready to pay for your web applications?

I was reading this post earlier today













  1. Communications sites like skype and facebook are inherently difficult to monetize because they depend on the network effect which is impossible to acheive with a paid product.

    Regarding Digg, I dont think any user generated content site will ever/can ever work as a paid platform. So that leaves RSS readers and Blogger. People used to pay for RSS readers, and people do still pay for blogging tools like type pad (I think) and squarespace. I think it is entirely conceivable that an RSS reader would again be worth paying for in the right context. In any case, I think it all boils down to the application. I think productivity apps that dont depend on a network effect and have value even if you are the only user, and that add significant productivity value, will more and more be paid for.


  2. I might not pay $20 for any one of those apps, but say $20 for a bundle of say 3 of those apps? Maybe.

  3. I do pay for Flickr. I'd pay for Google Reader as well. I pay for my own Wordpress host (BlueHost) but before that I paid some to for their hosting, until it became to limiting.

    I don't pay for Google Docs, which I use occasionally. It cannot replace MSOffice for me.

  4. As for paid rss, I wrote a story about this last year - I called it "feed for a buck proposal"

    Another big issue I see time and time again are startups offering a "freemium" model but giving so much for free that they will never get people to move to the paid plans.

    -- Allen