A friend of mine is starting a portal. Thankfully it is not his/her money. At this point of time the team is chasing a whole bunch of writers to deliver content as per pre set deadlines. Needless to say, the deadlines are rather tight, and the volume of content rather large and the expenses continuous. Their business model is simple — what i call the “field of dreams” model – if we build it they will come. We being the company that puts up this stuff, and they being the audience. And their ‘coming’ will attract moolah from the advertisers, and of course there is always the chance that people will subscribe to ‘good’ content.

However, the question still remains – as it did in 2000 – why will they come, and even if they did come how does it become a revenue model ? One thing that seems to be fairly clear is that people don’t want to pay for content – unless that content is very specialized. And, it does not really matter whether we are talking about TV or the net here. How many of the 200 odd channels will you subscribe to, paying hard earned cash. ? And tomorrow when CAS comes in, and the power of choice comes back to the hands of the consumer, how many channels beyond the ‘FTA’ (free to air) boquet will the household pay a maximum of Rs.5 per month to receive. By current indications, not too many. And, the same is the case with web.

The new jargon is UGC (user generated content) but indications are that we don’t really spend time and energy reading through badly written diaries or badly shot videos – by and large the sites that attract traffic, and within the sites – the content that attracts traffic – is professional in nature. And professional content costs. Which brings me back to the original question – how does it translate to profits. Two traditional methods have been subscription and advertising. But, given that there is so much ‘free’ and ‘good’ content available out there – is anyone going to pay for content – especially on the web? Last month the NYT made all its oped and columns free for everyone. Earlier you got the current issue free, and the rest had to be paid for. But now it is all free. Today, the WSJ has made all its content free – and this was a journal which was bandied around as the ideal subscription model. Niche focused content will bring in the paying subscriber, look at the WSJ the pundits said. And now look, they have made their content free — banking on large volumes of advertising chasing the audience that comes onto the site.

How much advertising revenue is there to maintain all these sites/channels with all their content? Will advertising alone be able to pay for all the content, and all the technology that goes into making that content I honestly don’t think so. Sooner or later the market is going to play the leveler, leaving those with the deepest pockets in there in the game. And the rest will die. When that happens, i suspect subscription will be back in full force !