Pay-Per-View Blogging? One Guy’s Giving it a Shot

Loren Feldman of the often rant-heavy blog 1938 Media has decided to see if people will be willing to pay for the occassional post, to the tune of $.99.

“Why am I doing this? Because I want to. It’s an experiment. I know that most of 99 percent of you aren’t going to pay 99 cents ever. So it goes. But you know what? Content has to be paid for at some point.” (via CNet)

I definitely think this is an interesting and worthwhile experiment but I am not convinced that Loren is providing enough value for the fee.  His videos are pretty rough and his posts are interesting but rarely worth more than, say, a copy of both NY dailies.

It would be interesting to see if he tried a pay-what-you-like scheme.  Anyhow, here’s his explanation:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3xlU_6Pqeo&hl=en]

Make Money by Charging Money

The live-broadcasting website Mogulus is going to try something few dare to utter – charge their users for premium services.

(via SAI) “But for Mogulus, as with most other live Web broadcasters, viewing is concentrated among the top shows, some of which are produced by people employed by major media companies. Haot said 40% of Mogulus’ bandwidth is used by the top 10 broadcasters. He’s betting some of them will pay for the privilege of a clearer picture, a customized player, and the opportunity to sell their own advertising.”

I don’t disagreee with that thinking but I do wonder about all the other sites that offer similar services.  If the free version is nearly as good as what Mogulus decides to charge for they will be in  trouble.

The scary thing about a web-service based company is that you are always ripe for being undercut either by new tech or someone who figures out how to do what you do cheaper – hey, that’s just like the real world!