September 29, 2006

Erm, Would You Cry If We Charged?

Team PSFK would love to get some feedback on an idea that we charged for our archives. We really want to spread ideas as far and wide as possible but at the same time we need to pay some of the writers who find these ideas.

We have a theory that anyone who might be looking at pages older than a month old are doing so for business intelligence and therefore wonder that maybe we should charge for giving a database of ideas.

Thoughts in the comments section please.

Article categories: Advertising & Branding

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20 Responses to “Erm, Would You Cry If We Charged?”

dk
Posted from: 82.46.24.46
September 29th, 2006 at 1:30 pm

It’s simple - the ‘give-it-all-away-for-free’ model doesn’t work if you need to pay the bills or the rent.

Charge because it has a dollar worth plus you won’t be upsetting anyone as they still get their psfk fix :-)
Ben Grill
Posted from: 69.48.139.2
September 29th, 2006 at 2:13 pm

i disagree. find an advertiser to sponsor the archive and give them sole rights. information is a commodity online and we’ll find it elsewhere. love ya but sorry it’s the truth. Ben
Yoffy
Posted from: 204.117.191.14
September 29th, 2006 at 2:13 pm

keep the info free. charge more for ads.
Jinal Shah
Posted from: 12.40.127.126
September 29th, 2006 at 4:49 pm

If you were to charge — you’d be competing with the likes of trendwatching and springwise where the information from several years ago is still available.
not a good idea. I agree with Ben and Yoffy –charge more for ads.
zach
Posted from: 72.137.20.40
September 29th, 2006 at 5:48 pm

I wouldn’t be too impressed. Just because you could make a buck doesn’t mean you should.

I like the sponsorship idea.

The problem is, when I first started reading this blog, I read back pretty far into the archives. I probably would have forgotten about this blog had that been closed to me.

Don’t do it.
Juan
Posted from: 201.244.225.62
September 29th, 2006 at 7:39 pm

Your page is probably the best trends page on the web, and that is becouse its free,..please explore other strategies to maintain it.

Thanks for everything
Jon Strande
Posted from: 68.32.178.139
September 30th, 2006 at 5:33 am

Most of the previous comments nail it, charge more for advertising. I stopped reading for about 2 months because I got busy on a project so I missed stuff when it was first published. I would have hated to have to pay to catch up! ;-)

That having been said, maybe there are some other things you can do… post content under the creative commons license so if people are using your stuff, you’ll hopefully get credit for it and some extra word of mouth around the offices where its used. Next, maybe monthly or quarterly you can go back and repackage posts into focused research reports that you can charge for. Finally, perhaps you could offer custom research reports for people - at the bottom of every post offer to build a custom 3-page report on that topic.

Regardless of all this, just keep writing the great stuff!

My $0.02 cents…
JV
Posted from: 141.157.213.71
September 30th, 2006 at 8:42 am

I’m with the majority here: Do a special sponsorship for the archives.

You could even do the higher-dollar, more intrusive interstitial ads or something — I’d sit through them if that were the price of getting to specifically searched content ….
James
Posted from: 68.174.145.23
September 30th, 2006 at 6:51 pm

Sponsorship might be difficult to land. I already find it annoying that many of the articles require subscription. Find a sponsor FIRST for the main section and give everything away for free.

If companies want to pay for ideas and thought leadership they will. One or two or even half a dozen articles that you can get a few extra bucks for are not going to make or break the business and will only further alienate your readers. If advertisers or corporations want your brain power they will be willing to pay thousands and thousands of dollars - more than enough to keep the archive free.
Caroline
Posted from: 213.42.21.75
October 1st, 2006 at 2:07 am

Do not do it.
It would defeat the whole purpose.
Thanks for your great insights!
Parmesh Shahani
Posted from: 59.183.7.11
October 1st, 2006 at 4:02 am

I would certainly not come back here if you charged. There are other blogs and sites that one can refer to - seriously, in the world we live in today, you guys would perhaps be missed a tiny bit, but then the majority of the audience would move on to other free sites and their always-open, always-free archives, and soon forget you. Keep yourself relevant for the future by keeping your archives free.
Andrwe
Posted from: 84.76.148.79
October 1st, 2006 at 10:20 am

This is a website about new trends - the archives aren’t as useful as the current stuff/what’s on IF anyway!
Piers Fawkes
Posted from: 151.205.176.227
October 1st, 2006 at 11:20 am

This is all very useful.

I agree that a lot of information published on psfk is already out there. But then, I think the team make a cracking job at finding those pieces.

IF! suprisingly does pretty well. The number of visitors is small compared to PSFK.com but there’s a constant flow… fyi.

Thanks again. Hope you don’t mind us asking.

(and keep the comments coming)
Reynold
Posted from: 59.183.28.7
October 1st, 2006 at 11:32 pm

Hi,

May I suggest a Sampler approach to articles. Let the first paragraph be free and charge for the full content. That will let people choose only those artcles that they know will be of interest.

Alternatively, some kind of intelligent grouping of articles would be useful. Do this on-the-fly, based on people’s search inputs, rather than through predetermined categorizations.
Commentator
Posted from: 194.221.212.20
October 2nd, 2006 at 4:36 am

If people are using it for business intelligence, then you run a risk of losing people for whom accounts/expenses is an ardous adminstration
gulliver
Posted from: 88.106.234.253
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 am

Fuck the freeloaders… good riddance to ‘em.
Wise-up and move on - away from the ignorant web-bred parasites to whom ‘all, now free’ is the expected norm.

Offers started on the basis of ‘freebie’ often wither and die. They’re commercially unsustainable. Why don’t Merc offer free cars or street hookers gratis blowjobs?

The ‘real clients’ - those who know the value of the offer - expect and want to pay for it… and they’re usually not hanging out in weblog comments.

The web abounds with blinkered dunces. Smart folk recognise them as the worthless distraction they are and don’t pander to them.

So, you lose most of your audience… good - burn off the dross to make room for a new and more alert viewers.
Aki Spicer
Posted from: 66.195.50.254
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:43 pm

charging will then require MORE for the money. a few sentences about something new is one thing. a fuller analysis of the trend and how it fits competitively and socially is another thing. to someone else’s comment, springwise/trendwatching provides an in-depth analysis of how business ideas are impacting the market. 2/3 of your content is merely a “gadget” note or a quick business idea. while novel, it doesn’t provide larger context. so you’ll have to do more work to justify a charge…either keep what you’re doing free, with the deeper context piece charged, or develop more context briefs with richer analysis.
akugel
Posted from: 67.102.254.134
October 5th, 2006 at 10:53 am

Put a big-name futurist or sociologist on the payroll, then start charging people for everything.

…are there big-name futurists?
Shan
Posted from: 208.125.1.130
October 13th, 2006 at 10:53 am

Is it possible to do something with Paypal? Charge like 1-2 cents for an article read. Sort of like a phone call. I wouldn’t want to go through the hassle to sign on every single time though to buy an article.

I guess most companies and sites like yours are dealing with these issues now.

How about giving away 50 “free” reads for watching a commercial? Or giving some much needed survey info for companies?

Alright I ‘fess up, I’m not much of a marketing guru. I have your RSS feed now, where I get most of your articles from. I look at the titles and then either press delete or open the link to read more.

Good Luck!
Heather
Posted from: 65.205.39.146
November 2nd, 2006 at 3:33 pm

It’s all about the advertising, make them pay, not your loyal fans!