Here’s an interesting take on paying for content on the Internet. The author thinks that these three criteria are necessary to induce readers to pay.

1 The content is worth paying for.
2 The price is low.
3 The transaction is easy.

He has some interesting ideas on how to reduce the transactional friction.

A lot more content is obviously going to disappear behind pay walls, and I think that a lot of those who do are not going to make a success of it. I’ll pay for a few premium sites like the WSJ or Financial Times but beyond that my resistance goes up exponetionally. I read a lot of content but if it had a price beyond my time attached I’d question if condition #1 was met.