The sad truths about subscription based sites.

[elfs]

According to a service that tracks such things, the most popular types of websites people put for which there is a subscription fee include (in order from most to least popular)

• How to lose weight
• Health products – Vitamins, minerals, colon blow
• Starting a home-based business
• How to make money from your existing business
• How to market on the Internet
• How to make money through investments
• Personal improvement
• How to turn a hobby into a business
• How to move to a new state/country
• How to practice your religion

I’m not sure why, but I find this list incredibly sad. There are so many decent sites out there that give this information away, and most of what’s behind the paywalls is pure bullshit not worth the pixels it’s drawn with.

This just confirms what one commenter said earlier: most people don’t want a well-made website. Well-made websites scare people into thinking there’s trickery, deceit, and too much intelligence behind them for the individual to keep up with. Stupidity sells.

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's technical journal, ElfSternberg.com

Comments

[bolindbergh]

Porn doesn't make the top ten? How odd....

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Nor gambling?

Seems unlikely really.

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

This is a note I meant to drop on your previous entry on design issues, but the basic observation is: "well-made website" contains a lot of assumptions about "well-made" and even "good".

I've found a great liberation in accepting that an e-commerce site that reminds me of GeoCities circa 1997 can be "good" and "well-made", just as I prefer a web sites that render quickly and are usable in Lynx. That a particular set of design guidelines scares me as a customer off is okay, because I'm not a market sample. The economic world would collapse if everyone bought like me. I may think that's a good thing, but it's not going to happen, so understanding it as it is, without laying my judgments on it, is of value.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

another possible take...

There's also so much DRECK out there on every one of those topics that it can be really intimidating to the uninitiated trying to tell the difference between good advice, bad advice, and scam-bait. People may feel that something they pay a (to them) nominal fee for is worth it, if it gives them the peace of mind that they can trust advice they get this way.

The fee in this case isn't really for the information itself, but for some assurance that it's (supposedly) above-board and has been checked and authenticated as Good Advice, thus saving the subscriber from the effort of figuring out what's reliable and what's not.

We Don't Shop Like That, (even for info) and most of your readers are likely part of a demographic to whom digging up the answers to things like this is fun because of everything else you learn along the way and wouldn't have otherwise. Then there's much of the rest of the population who would rather not bother with all that, and just want the answers handed to them, for preference in one package that's pre-cut into bite-size bits. That's who keep these sites in business, and probably feed most of the fuel to the spam/scam/phishing maw, too.

[lynx212.livejournal.com]

Have I mentioned recently how I adore your thought process?? If not I am doing so now.

That is a sad list indeed. What is this world coming to besides and end?

Note: As you know Fibromyalgia is now on the TV every time you turn around when a mere 5 years ago anyone with it was a attention seeking neurotic with hypochondria...anywho...the Fibro network makes members pay for the info they have (as opposed to Fibro center which is free) and I bet any article the Fnetwork charges you to read you could Google or it's been cited somewhere for free...