Are you considering starting a business involving content or are you already running one? Whatever the case, whether you
make money on social media or through your blog, the reality is that you may want to find a model that will rack in the cash and grow your business. This will start with you deciding whether you will have open or paid access to your content.
Determining the model you will use for your content will be premised on a proper understanding of the pros and cons inherent in each model. While one model may work for a certain situation, it may fail in another.
Open and paid access
The introduction of the internet has made a lot of information available. Anything that becomes available in abundance, based on the economics of demand and supply, tends to lose some of its value. It is for this reason that a lot of information is now available in open access to anyone who wants to read it.
On the other hand, paid access means that readers have to pay in one form or another if they want to access the content you produce. However, it is not always the reader who pays for the content; in certain instances, a business may pay for certain content and make it available to its clients. For instance, you can get paid for social media posts by a company that makes them available to its followers through open access.
Expenses
To the reader, the main advantage of open access is that information can be accessed for free. This is a great benefit because in most cases, certain people who may want to have access to your information, like students and the unemployed, may not have the money to pay for it.
Open access becomes a disadvantage for someone who wants to produce content but is not properly funded. The reality is that the production of quality information costs money and someone somewhere has to pay for it. It is for this reason that many people would question the quality of information provided in open access.
Paid access has the advantage that it provides the entity responsible for making the content available the financial resources to ensure quality control, which open access usually does not. This is the reason why some would argue that the model where readers pay for content ensures that content writing businesses are properly compensated for the significant role they play in content creation. However, this is an argument that still has to be tested; especially if you consider that there are several other ways of internet monetization such as advertising.
Quality
While you may want people to pay for your content because it is quality content, the readers accessing your site will not know this until they have had access to it. Many readers may not want to take the chance of paying only to discover that your content is not the value they expected.
Since the internet is such a huge place, it is more likely that the content you are asking your readers to pay for may be found elsewhere in open access. However, if you are convinced that your content will not be found anywhere else and it is extremely unique, then you can have a paywall because the people visiting your site have an understanding of the value of what you are offering.
Big brands like the New York Times or Washington Post, which made their names over time, can afford to create paywalls for people who want to access their content. However, as a small website or blog, you may find it challenging to convince readers about the quality of your content (even if it is), if it is hidden behind a paywall.
People generally look down on free stuff because it is usually associated with poor quality or no value. For paid access, this is an advantage as it confers authority on your content. People associate paywalls with quality. Asking people to pay for something says that the product or service is special; otherwise, you wouldn’t ask them to pay.
Readership
If you are still new as a writer and contemplating internet monetization, open access can give you the advantage of a wider audience that can help take your name out there. During a time such as this one when large volumes of information are competing for the attention of readers, open access is likely to help the articles you write to be discovered by more people online. If you are really a good writer, the increased number of views of your content could help you access the kind of audience which you can then
make money from later on.
While increased readership is a currency in content production, to keep the readers coming back to your website you will need to put in more resources into producing your content such as finding more expert writers. This could be a challenge if you do not have the budget that paid access could make available.
If your content is really good quality but unknown, open access can help you to grow while paid content can hinder growth.
Conclusion
Deciding whether to embrace an open access or paid access model is something that you need to give specific attention to if you want to take advantage of making money on the internet. However, you need to be cognizant of the advantages inherent in each model and decide based on your particular situation.
If your website is still new and you want to create a following, open access may have more advantages for you as it will encourage more people to read your content. Eventually, you will be able to gather the kind of audience that will eventually bring you the money if your content is useful and unique.
In case you already have a well-known brand and
you create content that is truly useful and unique and your readers are willing to pay for it, paid access may present more advantages for you.
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