All this for free
November 9, 1999
© 1999, Douglas E. Welch
So, you have finally found your way onto the Internet. You are probably overwhelmed by the sheer scope of everything
that is available there, both good and bad. You might also be
wondering about who pays for it all. While our tax dollars still
go into supporting some aspects, the Internet it seems to be without
any visible means of support. As we all know, though, there is
no such thing as a free lunch and someone has to pay something
to give us all access to this wide world of information.
Where’s the turnstile?
New Internet users often ask me if they can be charged for accessing
a web site or other information without knowing it. We are so
used to looking for the ticket booth and the entry gate in the
real world that we expect to see something similar online. The
good news is that you can’t be charged for anything on the World
Wide Web unless you give the owners of the web site some way to
bill you. You don’t have to worry about charges showing up on
your phone bill or getting an unexpected bill in the mail. Unless
you provide a web site your credit card number or other way to
bill you, the site and all of its information is free.
Some sites do have members-only areas to which you can subscribe.
Usually these areas provide much more extensive information than
you can get in the free areas. For example, ESPN Sportszone provides play-by-play analysis and searchable archives as part
of their pay services. When the Web was first becoming popular,
many companies thought that they would be able to charge for subscriptions
to their web sites. They quickly found out that most people would
not readily pay for information they could get from a printed
magazine. In order to survive they needed to find a new way to
make money with their web sites.
Buying your eyeballs
The model that web site owners have found most successful is very
similar to broadcast television and radio. If they can attract
enough readers to their web site advertisers are willing to pay
for the right to place advertisements on the web pages. This is
why, today, you see an advertisement on nearly every web page.
Web sites are making money by selling your eyeballs to the highest
bidder. For example, Yahoo can guarantee that several million people will look at its main
page every single day. Advertisers are willing to pay millions
of dollars to have their ad displayed do us. The more "eyeballs"
that Yahoo can attract to their web pages, the more they can charge
for advertising. This is why we have seen the proliferation of
so many "free" services. It is worth giving away the service in
order to sell more advertising. In this case, our fee for all
this information on the web is our attention. Web site owners
have found that just as with television programming, we are willing
to deal with the intrusion of ads on web pages in order to get
the services those sites provide.
Just like magazines and television, advertising pays the freight
for almost all Internet users. Beyond our monthly ISP (Internet
Service Provider) fees and a few advertisements, we pay nothing
to access the huge amount of information available on the web.
Douglas E. Welch is a freelance writer and computer consultant
in Van Nuys, California. He also writes Career Opportunities, a weekly column on high-tech careers and A Gardener's Notebook. You can find more of Douglas' writing on his web page at: http://www.welchwrite.com/
He can reached via email at douglas@welchwrite.com
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