Where Have All the Free Sites Gone?
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SEO engineers have a plethora of free tools at their fingertips that enhance the value they add to clients. Aaron Wall eloquently points this out in his review of Open Site Explorer – it is getting tough to make a living as an SEO because of so many free options. There are hundreds of Search Engine Marketing blogs that can be explored on a daily basis (only a handful would be considered “must-reads” IMHO) as well as SEM forums that you can join to get terrific tips. In fact, reading through the comments on many articles or blog posts can be a treasure trove in itself.
The crew at SEOmoz have a wonderful balance of free content via their blog posts and some useful tools, but offer a paid membership for their more “high powered” SEO services. Unless you are working for a company that foots the bill for memberships or your freelance career allows you the freedom to afford such things, I tend to advise SEOs to seek out other sources for information.
That being said, SEOmoz is offering a fantastic tool – Open Site Explorer – at no charge until 8AM Pacific on January 22nd. I strongly recommend you give this a spin in the next 20 hours. Some may find it so useful they hand over their hard earned cash to Rand. Others might say “Meh, I can get this info for no cost.“ That may be up for debate given the scope of this tool. What I’d love to do is tie this conversation in with an overall “What are you willing to pay for something on the internet?”
NY Times HQ - Compensating for something?
What Cost Content?
There is a cost associated with clicking on your browser icon and having endless information a few keystrokes away. Many feel that cost is way too high depending on their service provider. But once you get over that it feels so great to get lost in hundreds of sites that provide you with information that can be considered valuable or simply time-killing entertainment. And let’s be honest – for years we have taken for granted that most of these sites do not ask anything in terms of a monetary commitment from us. Throughout college I benefited from having Napster’s endless music catalog at my extremely poor fingertips for years. Now they charge but there are other options to get music without paying.
The New York Times is rolling out a model that will charge visitors for access to their articles. I visit the NYT site every morning and usually at lunch. I’m as into my liberal elite writing as the next person but I am not going to pay for news that I can get less-elite and free in hundreds of other places. Admittedly, if the internet news realm decides to get together and charge everyone then I am screwed and need to pick who I want to read.
Where Do We Go? Where Do We Go Now?
I get frightened when I imagine a world that is nothing but pop-up boxes each time I navigate to a site requesting I submit my credit card info to proceed. It is inevitable that publishers and technology pioneers will start working together so that everyone makes a nice profit and the free zones on the internet start to get smaller. The content we consider crucial to our day-to-day existence will come with a cost. This will be annoying for sure but it will be fascinating to see what type of pricing wars are going to unfold.
What will you be willing to pay to get news online? What will you be willing to pay to access online tools that make your job easier? Will some kind of “Black Market” emerge that undercuts all the big boys and offers incredibly cheap or free content that is equally as good?
These are questions keep executives at places such as New York Times pacing around boardrooms.