Would You Pay To Read a Blog?
I’m not against blogs making money. I guess the advertisements on my blog are a dead giveaway to that one. 
I do think that some bloggers overdo their advertising though. I prefer not to read blogs that overload their pages with advertising, particularly stuff that flashes and distracts from the blog.
But what about paying for membership to a blog?
That’s a new one to me.
A blog that has only been in my feedreader for less than a week sent out a post today saying it would be the last post I would be receiving and that from now on posts were only available to premium members.
Membership is listed as costing $10 a month or $100 for a year.
Now I haven’t been reading this blog long enough to know how valuable that is. At over 1400 current readers that could amount to $140,000 a year. Not a bad pay packet if you could pull it off.
IF you could pull it off.
It has occurred to me that it *might* be an April Fools Day joke. They sure have been flying around the internet this year. And being behind our time it could well fit into that.
However, I have already unsubscribed the blog from my bloglines. So if it IS an April Fools Day joke, is it a wise one? What if readers unsubscribe without a word.
What do you think? Would you pay to read a blog? And if it IS an April Fools Day joke, do you think it’s a wise one?
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Comments
It MUST be an April Fool’s joke.
Considering I have 90 blogs in my feed at the moment, I’d be evicted if I had to pay to read them all. So I would do the same as you… bye bye!
Ian - I had to go through my history folder to find them again because I unsubscribed from the site. LOL. It’s Jackbook dot com but it seems like a few people are thinking it’s an April Fools Day joke. No confirmation from the blog owner that I’ve seen yet. Maybe it was an excuse to “test the waters” on the idea? I still think it’s a bit silly (after all, I subscribed)
Frogdancer - I hope so. Surely no one could think they’re THAT good? LOL.
I can’t imagine paying to read a blog. It would have to be content that was so fantastic I was prepared to part with money, but I really can’t see that ever happening. I would have thought the competition for readers is tough enough without making even harder for people to read your work.
I think there’s also such an expectation these days for free stuff on the net (software, online tools, photo and file sharing etc) that people are less and less prepared to pay for things.
I guess it probably was an April Fool’s Day joke, but I think it’s a pretty stupid one. They’ve probably lost quite a few readers like you who unsubscribed. It also says something about the blog author’s sense of humour (and ego).
I’m thinking it was probably an April Fool’s joke, but in pretty poor taste. I wouldn’t pay to read a blog, no matter how much I enjoyed the writings of the owner. It just doesn’t seem right to me.
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No way! I’d be interested to know how many paying customers they get … what site is it by the way? I’m curious to see who thinks they’re good enough to charge like that.