WildBlueSkies - Trends and strategies in Digital Media

The free dating website Plentyoffish, makes about $6 million a year just from Google Adsense. TrafficEstimate puts their visitors at 4,698,300 over the last 30 days compared to 1,079,900 for Lavalife and 7,803,700 for Match in the same period.
Given a chance, everyone would like something for free, and is the Internet promoting it?
Content
Take online content for example - the New York Times has decided to abandon its subscription model and move towards an advertisement supported model, with the Wall Street Journal is slated to follow suit. Most magazines are now moving to provide their content online. Videos of television shows for instance are also appearing on online video sites such as You Tube, etc. I wonder if it would be possible for an upcoming band to follow a model where they give away their ad-supported album free on the Internet. With Open Course Ware, MIT too is taking a large portion of its knowledge base online. Journals could currently be the best example of paid content. This of course does not taken into consideration online piracy.

Subscription driven services
Matrimonial and dating websites are largely subscription driven, but with the advent of social networking websites, you no longer need to pay to contact someone you want to. Even within matrimonial websites, Canada based iRishta is experimenting with a free model for matrimonials. Would data authenticity command the premium?
Pioneered by Gmail, web based email service providers now provide almost unlimited webspace, and some like Gmail allow free POP3 download, aggregate email from other POP3 accounts, and allow you to set up multiple accounts from which to send emails.
What are the content and services that would be able to command a fee - would B2B services remain subscription driven, or would it be possible for them to act as trade facilitators, getting a cut on every transaction?

Studies show that students would be ready to receive ads on their mobile, in return for freebies such as ringtones, etc.
It would be interesting to see the revenue models that evolve, and what it means for all the online companies.

Filed under: Business, Digital culture