Paying for Internet Content

Pay for Internet Content?

That's what Jakob Neilsen thinks that we would be doing by the year 2000. In 1998, he wrote a column that advocated charging users for internet content, instead of relying on traditional internet advertising. Neilsen hypothesized that users would be willing to pay 1 cent or 5 cents per page view.

I find the idea of paying for internet content ludicrous.

I already pay $50 a month for cable internet so why should I pay to access internet content? AOL became the largest internet provider in the late 1990s because they offered customizable internet content through dial-up access. In 2005, AOL is shedding customers faster than they can sign up new ones because people are unwilling to pay for content.

As readers of my blog know, I frequent ESPN.com on an almost daily basis. ESPN.com offers ESPN Insider for a $39.95 fee. Sometimes, the content looks really appealing - the latest trade rumors, top fantasy football picks, and "inside" information - but I can't bring myself to pay $40 bucks to use a website.

Neilsen says that micropayments are the way of the future, but micropayments seem to be everything counter to what the internet is: Unfiltered, unowned information. To his credit, Neilsen acknowledges the potential failures of micropayments saying: "Subscriptions break the basic principles of the web," but he predicted that micropayments would be widespread in two years.

Neilsen received some interesting feedback on his observations. Neilsen is usually right on web usability, but I'm glad his predictions of fee-based internet browsing were wrong.