Outside the Beltway

WEBONOMICS

James Joyner · Thursday, May 29, 2003 · 3 comments

Jane Weaver is high. She takes at face value a rather dubious poll and then extrapolates into absurdity:

In 2001, 52 percent of consumers said they were not willing to pay for Web content, Gartner found. By the end of last year, that number dropped to 45 percent of wired folks still not willing to pay up.

“People are becoming less resistant to paying for content online” said Denise Garcia, the analyst who worked on the Gartner study.

For one thing, the seven percent change may well be inside the margin of error. For another, saying you’d be willing to pay and actually paying are another.

And, she obviously didn’t read OTB this afternoon:

Major online newspapers have already begun adding premium services. On Wednesday, The New York Times converted its free e-mail news alerts into a $19.95-a-year subscription service for new sign-ups. The 500,000 readers who already receive the News Tracker e-mail service will be charged starting June 13.

Ummm. . . . no. I have no idea how many of the current 500,000 readers will agree to pay $19.95 for the subscription, but I’m guessing it is several orders of magnitude less than the number that signed up for the free service. (Hell, I stopped my free subscription ages ago because it was annoying me.)

I’m wondering if Weaver isn’t one of the tax analysts employed by the Democrats that think people’s behavior remains static regardless of associated costs?

Hmm. Let’s try an experiment. OTB averages roughly 500 unique visits a day. Starting at midnight, everyone who visits must donate $100 via one of my tip jars. I should be able to do this full time soon!

(Hat tip: InstaPundit)