This is something I have been wanting to write about for a while now as I see more and more e-books for sale on ebay and the like - market seems to be saturated with people offering to sell information to you at a price.
Ever happens in the real/offline world as well - Take things like Weight Watchers for example - You sign up to them, get access to their database of food and what is worth whatever pro points and go from there but what you are paying for is access to that information. They even do a 'online only' membership so it is clear that they want you to pay for access to that information.
Sometimes information can be used as a bait to something better. "sign up and put your email address here to get this free e-book" is something you often see where sometimes the value of having email addresses far outweighs anything else.
I have even looked before at monetizing this very site. Not in a traditional sense but as I have mentioned before you would not believe in the logs how many visitors we get that look at information on one page, maybe a few more, and then split. I thought of turning on a function where you can only view 'so many' pages before you HAVE to become a member to see anymore on this site. I decided against it however as I was unsure how it would work in regards to SEO and general site habits.
So it seems everyone wants to put a cost around information these days. I suppose if people will buy it then why not gain from it.
Ever happens in the real/offline world as well - Take things like Weight Watchers for example - You sign up to them, get access to their database of food and what is worth whatever pro points and go from there but what you are paying for is access to that information. They even do a 'online only' membership so it is clear that they want you to pay for access to that information.
Sometimes information can be used as a bait to something better. "sign up and put your email address here to get this free e-book" is something you often see where sometimes the value of having email addresses far outweighs anything else.
I have even looked before at monetizing this very site. Not in a traditional sense but as I have mentioned before you would not believe in the logs how many visitors we get that look at information on one page, maybe a few more, and then split. I thought of turning on a function where you can only view 'so many' pages before you HAVE to become a member to see anymore on this site. I decided against it however as I was unsure how it would work in regards to SEO and general site habits.
So it seems everyone wants to put a cost around information these days. I suppose if people will buy it then why not gain from it.