the psychology of being online, why people want it all free or not at all?
 

seems like a phenomenon that is very much online as opposed to in brick and mortar stores, etc.... people don't hesitate to pull out a credit or debit card at a store and buy lunch or a book or magazine or any little things or spend their money at movies or buying stuff... but online the same people seem to have a psychological mental block about paying anything at all for anything...


the phenomenon can even be seen on any forum including here, people will spend hours searching and will post requests for a software script that has to be FREE, even if there are perfect solutions available for their situation for a low cost that they could save themselves all kinds of time and headaches and just buy it... I think I saw 2 or 3 threads like that in the past day even, where the most important thing to the person was that the script be FREE


weird how there is such a difference in a person's willingness to pay for something just because it is online

It's as simple as this....

If you run into Foot Locker and snatch up every Nike and Adidas you can carry and run down the street, the cops will chase you and arrest you. There probably will be jail time.

When you snatch and grab on the internet, the cops don't come after you.

I was one of the people who downloaded everything years ago -- but I've been trying harder as time goes on to go into my wallet for my music, software and games. I just know that I'm not helping the creators of my digital entertainment make more of that media I love, if I just steal it all the time.

When everyone adopts that attitude, people will start paying more. I don't expect that to happen.

People who are searching for FREE stuff are 99.99% of the time failures in my experience.

Buy stuff that's proven to work and be done with it.

Enough people click on my sites to get their credit card out, so what are you banging on about? Sales down?

people expect that their monthly internet fee is supposed to cover everything on the internet...

I think that part of it is because there is free option on the internet. For example, if I go to my local store to buy a new CD there isn't an option for me to walk a few shelves over and get the same exact CD for free. It used to be that you had to know where to look online to get free stuff, now it is as easy as finding the stuff you buy. If you can use Itunes or buy something on Amazon you can figure out how to get music for free on a torrent site.

The same can be said for movies and software. If you went to the store and there were a free version, but it didn't come with a box or a manual or the pay version in the box with a nice users manual, almost everyone would take the free version.

Somehow people also have it in their head that if they pay for internet access they should get this stuff for free. There is also a group of people who have the attitude that taking it for free is in some way "protesting" against the big studios and telling them to make quality stuff or make it more readily available. And there are those who feel the artists are getting screwed anyway, so they feel they aren't really hurting them by just taking the CD. It is a strange psychosis that is for sure.

Go to torrentfreak.com and read any article that has anything to do with torrent sites getting shut down or having legal action taken against them, then scroll down and read the comments people leave. It is amusing, sad and enlightening all at once.

I don't even want to say how much money i've spent on design, domains, hosting, and others, just to give it all away for free.

It is an interesting beast being an affiliate in adult...

I see the state or government charging us a tax or fees for the amount of time spent on the internet in the future. They were smart they pushed the educational issue to have internet in the classrooms, etc. Once the world needs the internet they will figure out a way to make us pay.....

that is a very good analogy :thumbsup

I'm actually going to use a game here, Dungeons & Dragons Online, they moved to a free model with pay for "extras" and are now making ten times the money.

The key is a central payment settlement capability that lets people pay small enough amounts one time with no obligation to the individual webmaster. Also, a way to cloak charges would help so "Donation to SAVE THE WHALES INTERNATIONAL 50.00" yields a code with 50$ value -

The subscription model plays to a very small segment that is increasingly jaded and sophisticated.