Paying For Web Content
The Andrew Sullivan team
Andrew Sullivan is my favorite blogger and I read his page a few times a daily. Honestly, the only things I read are Sullivan, Metafilter, Devour, Slate, and Kottu. If there’s nothing new on those sites I’m like ‘why’s there nothing on the Internet?’ As if the Internet suddenly became a 12 channel TV. But I digress.
Sullivan’s a huge blogger with millions of pageviews. His business model has long been to subdomain with mainstream news publications – TIME, The Atlantic and The Daily Beast. They get the pageviews, serve ads which I never notice and cover his costs. Which are more than you’d think. Traffic costs money and he has seven staff to keep to a frentic schedule. Online content and quality matter and both cost – you need people and you need solid tech. One estimate is that his site would cost about $500,000 a year to run, which he didn’t disagree with.
I have long hated typing in andrewsullivan.time or .theatlantic or .thedailybeast and I never honestly liked the publications he worked under. I mean, they were OK, but it’s not what I was reading for. But he had to make a living and support his husband and dogs and stuff. But now he’s striking out on his own.
Sullivan is offering a paid version of his site. Regular people still get most stuff and can come in off of links, but you can may to ‘Read More’ and assorted stuff. I honestly don’t even understand that much or care. It’s weird. After reading him for years I was quite happy to pay. Just happy to pay. I actually got bored reading the pitch cause I was sold already, I just scrolled down and clicked to the payment option. It costs $19.99 minimum, but I paid $25, or about Rs. 3000, for the year.
Maybe it’s the personal connection, you know, understanding that the money goes to people rather than a corporation, but I was happy to do it. It’s weird cause I used to read the NYTimes a lot but I still just hack the URL rather than pay for it. I don’t know why, but paying money to that abstract entity someone fills me with not wanting to do it.
I’m skint but I just paid for a blog. I don’t know if that’s a business model, but it’s an interesting change.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
Indi is my favorite blogger and I read his page a few times daily. Honestly, the only thing I read these days is indi.ca. If there’s nothing new on this site I’m like ‘why’s there nothing on the Internet?’
Same with me. But we’d better not tell him that. If Indica becomes a paid site it’ll be like missing a daily meal.
Hah! I do know indi reads Jezebel!
This is a great blog, dose any one a sri lanka tech blog I have viewed many but not good quality except for a hand full.