There is no such thing as a free lunch

I’ve started this post at least twenty times in the last five years.  It’s time to finish it.

Dear internet content consumer,

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

–Rob

Is that such a hard thing to understand?  On the Internet it appears to be.  For better and worse the Internet has had a “culture of free” since the days of the NSFNet and its Appropriate Use Policy (AUP) which restricted commercial use.

Content on the internet costs money to produce.

Metafilter user blue_beetle said it famously, “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

I won’t bore you with tales about the decline of newspapers in the US.

You can either pay for content with negotiable currency or with your attention (i.e., advertisements).  A combination of psychological buying factors and transactional expenses make advertising the most plausible business model for content creators.  Get over it.