Page 1 of Would you pay £3.50 a month for DVD Reviewer?

Okay you can all relax, there are no plans, current or otherwise to start charging a subscription rate for accessing this website. But a few of us were chatting on IRC about how publishing companies might go about covering their internet costs in the future.

Obviously advertising is still the biggest form of revenue for such sites including ours, without this we don`t exist, simple as that. But this website is also only here because of a lot of goodwill by its review team and various other contributors.

There is a lot of talk generally on the net about micropayment systems, etc. Subscription for access is also another way to go about it. Question is would the majority of people be prepared to actually pay for? :)

Sure, although I would expect some new stuff to be brought in, and a definite bonus over the content offered for free.

You were the (unfortunate) person who got me into DVD and I`ve never used another site for dvd news and reviews in the 2 and a bit years I`ve owned a player (now there`s brand loyalty for you).

As I requested earlier, a more upto-date pic of you Rob and more columns where Mike Mclaughlin finds something to be happy about.

Creating a pay-site would not necessarily mean the content of the site would improve, unless of course those paying the fee demanded that it did. Furthermore I`m not convinced that enough people would be willing to pay to make it worthwhile in the first place, as most of our custom at DVD Reviewer seem to be those with a passing interest, who would have little to benefit from shelling out their cash (and, I`m not even convinced it matters what figure it would be, as there would have to be a bottom-level.) So, apart from the `hard-core` readers, we`d probably end up rather lonely instead of the site being as popular as it is.

As for my relentless dour-ness, I promise, PROMISE, that within the next, say, 5 years, I`ll write a nice column about smiling children, baby seals, `Scary Movie 8` and trees or something.

--Mike

The other model currently doing the rounds is "enhanced content" for a monthly fee - over and above what is offered for free.

IMDB have recently launched IMDB Pro and various other websites have similar arrangements.

I subscribe to various printed magazines each month, and find that they offer maybe a couple of hours reading for £4-5 per month and I`ll admit that I get much much more from many websites for free.

The problem is however, that if you charge for access, and the content is available elsewhere - news, reviews, forums etc for nothing, many people will simply go elsewhere.

Charge for subscriptin and people might go elsewhere.

How about a voluntary donation scheme? Those with money growing from trees (:D) could donate.

The only site that gives u a fairly regular return is the bargain buckets forum. I would probably pay a certain subscription to this but prob not £3.50. you couldnt charge a lot for itn as u can just look on the other forums, deja, newsgroups , etc, but i have to say that reviewer is the one I use all the time as it is just the easiest to see regular bargains, and complaints about kodak - -tossers. Anyway, thats my view.

The question of subscription fees for any web site/company, is and always will be an uncomfortable question ! From experience I know that at least 7 of us used wisden.com before its multi million pound relaunch in the last quarter of 2001. They then saw it fit to ask for a yearly/monthly subscription to try and bring cost into line and that was when we all stopped using it for work and fun. Yes you can accesss a few headline stories but the majority requires a subscription, a apin everytime to click on a link to go to a `members only` page !

I know cricket and dvd`s are different but the issues are similar. I would imagine that a high % of readers would go elsewhere unfortunately. Now obviously I don`t know the figures for the site mentioned but they certainly won`t get anywhere near the number they expected. I only found dvdreviewer a month ago and love adding comments if I can - it`s a great website. If I can contribute to anything on the site, I`m always happy to write for my bacon - if you know what I mean !!

keep up the great work,

warney

Hey guys,

With respect to DVD Reviewer - and heck, I visit this website every day ! - there`s no way I`d pay a subscription.

That`s not a slight on the quality of the site, just on me being a total miser... ;)


Brian

I might pay £1 :)

Over the past 5 years we have grown accustomed to net access becoming cheaper. 24 hour access for a fixed fee is very attractive. Since this has been available in the UK internet usage has exploded.

It would seem to be going against the grain to start charging for something we have had for free.

As enjoyable as this site is I don`t think I could bring myself to pay.

All the sites which have introduced fees will surely have a rude awakening when they realise their low hit counts mean less advertisers using them. This will domino. As less users are on a site so other users will drop off and few new users will join.

I think its very much an all or nothing. When you can choose to go elsewhere for free you probably will.