Remember when you pretty much got anything you wanted for free on the Internet?  Free Internet access, free mouse pads, free reliable email accounts, etc.

Guess what?

The companies offering these free services could not stay in business anymore.  Why?  It is quite simple, if you are going to give away all you valuable resources and contents for free, how are you going to make any money?

Now these companies are charging a fee or limiting these services until you upgrade to the premium services at a cost. Free is now becoming fee.  The problem most companies are now realizing is that people do not value things that they get for free.

Think about it.

You are more motivated to read an ebook that you paid $50 for, rather than an ebook you got for free.  Even if the free ebook has ten times more valuable information in it, you will still read the one you paid for.  Why?  Human nature, has made you assign an intrinsic value to the book you spent money on.

The debate has arisen on how much content on the Internet should really be free?  How far can a webmaster go before he can fairly start asking members to pay for his or her content?

To understand this, we need to revisit the original Internet advertising revenue model.  In the beginning, many Internet companies decided that they would offer their content for free and hope that the advertising revenues from banners, text ads, etc. would cover the operating costs.  But since online advertising has taken a drastic plunge in the past few years, these companies collapsed.

This advertising model was successful in the early stages when almost everyone from Uncle Jim to Grandma was clicking on every banner they could see.  Yes, banners were interesting at first, but the seasoned Internet user now cognitively tunes out from these banners that were the lifeblood of these web sites.

Internet publishers are now realizing that advertising revenues cannot be considered as their primary source of revenue anymore. Internet users need to understand that these online sites that provide valuable information have bills to pay and costs to cover.  But the early stages of the Internet has ingrained into the average users mind that everything should be free on the Internet.

The only realistic long-term answer for companies is to start charging for their valuable content. But the question of how to convince the average Internet user to pay for this content after they have been accustomed to downloading or reading for free is a difficult one.

No longer can web publishers build content rich web sites and expect that advertising revenues will keep them afloat.  Most publishers viewed advertising revenues as a reward for their hard work and dedication to building these web sites, but this source of revenue has dried up faster than a popsicle in the desert!

This concept has even affected ezine publishers who cannot simple rely on classified ad revenues anymore.  Some ezine have dropped external advertising altogether and started to charge subscription rates the same way offline newsletters charge subscription rates.

If you are currently running a web site that is still running on the old advertising business model, it is time to rethink your strategy in order to survive.

Britannica.com at one time was giving free access to their entire encyclopedia collection.  They started losing money by giving away their hard researched content and had to start charging a fee.

There are essentially three main ways that you can make money by selling your content:

1) You can divide the content on your web site into two parts.
You can offer some information for free and charge a fee to the
user to access other information.  That way you can attract
visitors with the free content and hope that they invest in the
content that you provide for a fee.

2) You could split the "same" content on your web site.  For
example, you could provide a listing of 10-15 links for a
particular topic and charge a fee to the user to access the
entire database which may consist of 60-70 links.  I like to
call this method the "teaser" method.

3) Syndicating your content can provide thousands of dollars in
revenues.  If your content is unique and highly in demand, you
may well be able to re-sell it to other sites.  There are a few
services on the Internet that will even help syndicate your web
site.  On of the most popular is iSyndicate.com, who will help
sell your content for a percentage of the revenues.

You could charge a yearly fee to users to access your content. You may want to even consider charging on a monthly basis so that the user does not have to commit to an entire year.  Some online payment services such as PayPal.com can provide you with reoccurring billing without any work on your part.

There are other methods to turn your content into profits without offending your visitors or publication readers.  But keep in mind that to make this revenue model successful it will require that your content be valuable and "the best of the best" in its particular niche.