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

[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.