Blogger Chartreuse has come out of Beta loaded for bear (or bare). He is charging $9.99 a month to enter his world, Chartreuse Unloaded. But it’s not for everyone. Answer a few simple questions and he may let you in. Now this is innovation. Forget Adsense and click ads. Chartreuse has found the answer. Just charge baby.
It worked for the Wall Street Journal. If I recall, they were among the first to recognize the value of their content.
I pay fifty bucks a year for online access in addition to my WSJ print subscription …
There’s something to be said for having the wherewithal to charge for one’s work product.
Yes, we are all accustomed to paying for news content. This is blogging as pay-per-view “entertainment”.
It looks to be a mixed media blog with video & music. Very interesting.
I guess he doesn’t understand what the blogging community will bear. Believe me, being a programmer and a woman who has been blogging since the 90s, pay for blog content will alienate the greater blogging community. The Internet community isn’t very kind to people that charge money for things that ought to be free. I can understand charging for real news content from newspapers and trade journals (they pay journalists to write quality content- I expect to pay for that), but a regular blogger- not a chance.
I agree REBlogGirl (I just love that name). A regular blogger hasn’t any decent chance…but the question remains, what if you are NOT a regular blogger? Can you charge and will people pay?. Chartreuse seems to be pitching a multi-media entertainment blog. I do not know what will be there but people will pay for entertainment. If you remember before cable tv, everyone said No way–why would anyone pay when the networks give it to you for free. Now there’s satellite radio. An Entertainment Blog is a different animal I think.
The only way to know is to try. If he’s right, ca-ching. If he’s wrong he can always go back to his non-paying free blog–no great loss.
Always nice to get your comments REBGirl.
Stumbled across this post today and found it interesting that someone would charge for accessing a blog. When checking out the link to the blog - it no longer goes to the blog. It appears that he is parking the blog or trying to sell it.