Here's an article that argues that most individual publishers won't be able to make enough advertising revenue from their websites, and that the future of publishing is in platforms such as Medium.
Thanks to Lakshmi Kannan for the link!
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
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While I agree with Williams that "The Internet is not going to be about billions of people going to millions of websites. It will be about getting [content] from centralized websites," [reduced search costs!] I'm skeptical that Medium will prove a viable revenue source for publishers, at least not if Medium's strategy is to "do [a] turnkey premium-content option–with a paywall." A paywall works as a monetization strategy for the New York Times and other online newspapers, in part, because those news outlets publish content that consumers have a long history of paying for through the print edition. Those subscribers that pay for access to unlimited articles are now simply paying for the same content in a different medium. Reading blogs is different. Consumers have always been able to consume blogs for free. And consumers hate being asked to pay for things they've historically received for free, and often refuse to do so (see, e.g., http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret). If the future of independent publishing is on sites like medium, the money will come from ads, not from subscription fees. Readers will be the product, not the customer.
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