Open The Dialogue

One of the biggest reasons that many Internet companies / services have been so successful is that they are free to use. Well, free as in there is no actual money changing hands in order to use them, even though advertisements may be displayed on screen, names could be added to a mailing list, etc. So it begs us to ask the question: Would a successful service today be just as successful if you had to pay to use it? If you had to pay, or had the option to pay, let's say, should you get an ad-free experience, or one with different features, perhaps those that take more hoops to jump through as a "free" user? What about a prime example of Flickr? It offers "pro" accounts that give an ad-free account, one that offers more uploading space, yada yada yada, all for just under $25/year. There are a ton of people who think it's worthwhile, probably most of which a) believe in the service and b) want to show their wares off more and more - so they've dropped $24.95 for the year, and continue to use Flickr more or less as they had previously done so, all while the rest of us who aren't "pro" users go about using it just as we do.

This leads us to the main question here, as I've somewhat set you up by asking about Flickr. Would you pay to use Google? Over at Signal vs. Noise, Jason Fried wants to know if you would pay $5 a month to use it. I'd wonder about the same thing.

Therefore, I've set up a really quick survey, which can be taken here. Obviously this isn't going to be super scientific, and I'm not asking for demographic information, just basic stuff about paid services and preferences. I'd really appreciate your feedback, and will publish the results within the next few days, or as soon as a reasonable sample comes in.

[via Fimoculous]