jayeff

It's flawed in many respects, which is why I only went so far as to say "I'm not certain..."

To say more at this time is dangerous and your response implies a status quo that can be manipulated to produce straight-line results. In reality there are a host of ever changing variables: not least a constant flow of webmasters joining and leaving the business.

Superficially, the effect of charging to submit is no different than any other increased cost. It will be swallowed easily enough by those at the top of the game and it will raise the barriers to entry. Its impact on the majority who occupy the middle ground is the hardest to determine, particularly as we don't know yet how widespread charging will become, nor at what level it will settle down.

In particular, we don't know what impact more TGPs selling top spots will have. Many people's results in the past have included top listings as well as minor listings. Who knows how far their sales will decline if only minor listings are available to them? Reasonably, reduced sales plus extra costs will push many from profit to loss.

It's all becoming very reminscent of the mini-cab business in London during the early 70's. We used to look after a core of drivers, enough to service our customers. Meanwhile we advertised for new drivers every day in the Evening Standard and charged applicants $50 a week (a month's non refundable deposit payable in advance) "radio rental" to come on the circuit. These guys didn't have a hope in hell of earning any money back, but there were always enough hopefuls that we used to make more from pocketing deposits that we did from our main business.