Five things you need to know: Paid-for content

Consumers have been getting content for free on the internet for years, and they don’t like the idea of suddenly having to pay for it. The general consensus is that people will only pay for content that has genuine value and cannot easily be replicated elsewhere.

The most obvious example of this is financial news and analysis. But most news is general news, and very few people are going to be willing to pay for a story from one newspaper website when they can get exactly the same information for free from ten others. For the paid-content model to make sense, either content has to be unique, or everybody has to start charging.  Media