[PRO/CON] Paid Subscriptions to Online Content

Just wondering why your friend, "Having no expertise in silversmithing nor ambition to become a silversmith", received the offer?

That sounds like a degree of target creep setting in, sending things to folk who have no apparent connection with the subject matter.

Opportunistic/optimistic marketing perhaps?

TANSTAAFL
'The moon is a harsh mistress' by Robert Heinlein.

It's the 10% of my worries coming true that really bothers me.

I can't imagine paying for content. My idea of getting a job is not creating YouTube content. I like to be able to sit down with my friends, face to face....and talk.....and have a meal.

Maybe I should consider this revenue stream, but I have to go work on a house right now. I know that I will get paid for my efforts with that job.

Actually the term TANSTAAFL pre-dates "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by at least a few decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch

If these social media sites and others are going to mine & sell my data in order to sell me something in the form of targeted ads & spamming my email, is it wrong for me to expect something in return? That something would be free internet access to the social media sites with no degradation of content.

If someone wants to start a subscription based service for a particular interest, good on them, hope they get the subscribers they need to make it viable. But blanket subscriptions for all internet content is wrong especially in cases where there is no other choice. Not everyone's blog, video, app, game or opinion is interesting enough to get paid for. If you want to be an entrepeneur, there is risk involved and it's called your own financial investment. If you can't invest in yourself maybe you should rethink your direction.

"Consumers with money to spend could end up with the “good stuff” while those without money or the willingness to spend it drown in an ocean of dreck."

Sixty years ago, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon wrote that 90% of science fiction is crap. In fact, he said, 90% of EVERYTHING is crap. 90% of most social media is no better, and it is arguably worse than that. Paid subscriptions to YouTube or newspapers isn't going to improve either youtube or newspapers.

I am having a bit of a problem with the chosen word "mentor" in the context that it is being used here or there or everywhere or anywhere! It especially becomes quite oxymoronic when used together with the dollar sign in the same sentence.
R.Heinlein and T.Sturgeon may not have gotten the memo from Thomas Jefferson pertaining to Intellectual Property:
“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air … incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
I'd go one step further and include all information/knowledge to be shared freely. The reward system for such is (or should be) the satisfaction of paying forward. Nothing more; nothing less.
Yes, I do pay (dearly and yearly) for my WSJ that is delivered to my house 6 days/week and also subscribe to about a dozen magazines. Yet, my library card is still au gratis as it should be.
Mr. Rankin, I fully appreciate all that you freely do to make me less ignorant, but I'd rather be bliss [?] than pay for it! Thank you.

I have been enjoying your articles for years and this one has made me think (a little, can't quite seem to get to the 142% smarter yet) about what I have been receiving without giving anything back.
Bob, I have just bought you a Snickers. Enjoy!

I usually read news from Google News. When it redirected me to Washington Post or New York Times (as I remember), I used to get several first lines with offer to subscribe. What did I do? I excluded such sources from my news feed.

So in my case anybody who tries to offer me to pay money for any internet content, will lose me as a reader/viewer. Just think about the situation: Somebody tries to express their own point of view. THEIR OWN. They want us to pay attention to THEIR POINT OF VIEW. And wanted us to pay money for that. Sorry, pals, I have my own point of view and don't care if anybody else has another. Especially if they want money to express their views to me. It is like to require money for junk mail of advertisements everybody diverts from mail box straight to trash can.

Internet is a big junk yard and thank to search engines we are able to catch something valuable from that huge heap of garbage. I am not going to pay for garbage.

By the way, every source that asked for money for their content was from left side of political spectrum. And honestly, I am not surprised.

About mentoring - there are a lot of web sites that offer assistance for help from an expert for some money - as some amount or as donation. I am absolutely OK with that. You want help with some guarantee - pay for that. Monetizing social networking for me is unacceptable. I mean the core of it, not stuff like games or some other content for entertaining.

We still have free public libraries. How the Internet is different?

Information has to be free. No excuses.

The fact that Facebook has become a multi-billion dollar company without charging its customers upfront leads me to believe that paying for content is unnecessary. Personally, I will not use websites that require me to join for a fee. If Facebook begins to charge, I will delete my account without hesitation.

Facebook nor any other social media will not get my money. They are free and I don't use them. They are a complete waste of time. I'd rather spend 24 watching paint dry than 10 minutes on Facebook.

When a commercial publication puts a paywall in place, this presents no problems, particularly as companies who do usually supply limited access (x number of times before the paywall ends the user's access). Facebook is another story. There are groups on FB who limit access, some on the basis of geography and others based on subject content, and I have no trouble with that. But FB has no business hosting groups who want payment for access. The creators of such groups should be told
to create their own little empires elsewhere.

This harks back to the days of Compuserve where some content was part of the basic subscription, some was "permium" needing an additional monthly payment on the subscription and other content charged "separately".

Back then though that was pretty much it for some of the information I was after (work paid to get to our needed forums). Today though it's easy (or fairly so) to copy information to other sites so while content like video/audio may be controlled by paywalls and DRM, information itself can and will still be distributed (so will the audio/video in all likelihood).

Trouble is producing and distributing is still expensive but people don't want to pay (or not as much as is being asked for) so ad's were introduces. Now if relevant and non-intrusive this could be OK - I don't mind ad's on Google searches, I am looking for something and if that something returns as an "ad" so what - but sometimes these ads are not relevant, they consume more "data" than the page around them, they are intrusive and sometimes can include "additional undesirable function". So people block ads which leads to less income and more chance of content being charged for.

I don't use Facebook now though I do have an account, my association publishes its minutes there, I go on once every couple months. Never if they charged me. While there are some aspects of social media I enjoy, if they want me to pay for them, they'll lose me forever (Top Gun).

As pointed out, even the "free" resources make money from ads. I do have a digital newspaper subscription, as long as it's reasonable I'll do that. But I'll never pay for most things I do online, I'm just as happy offline, this isn't an addiction or a need, it's a service I use because it's there. If it weren't, I'd never miss it or think about it.

I saw this coming. It's all bout GREED.

Just to let you all know: The Guardian, imho the best newspaper in the world, has no paywall whatsoever.

If you elect me President, I GUARANTEE EVERBODY that all things internet will be FREE, FREE, FREE.