Converting a service to a subscription is hard. Customers get used to "free" and will always be resentful.
Starting as a subscription service at least doesn't feel like a broken promise.
Converting a service to a subscription is hard. Customers get used to "free" and will always be resentful.
Starting as a subscription service at least doesn't feel like a broken promise.
The problem is that a lot of these services are just worthless. As in their market price is precisely zero dollars and zero cents. The reason you won't get me to subscribe to your random recipe or news website isn't the competition - the site simply provides no value. If it also costs nothing, then I might be indifferent to browsing it when it appears as a search result. If it costs anything, I definitely won't. I also feel the same about your competitors, so I'm not replacing you with them - I'm just browsing this type of content less. And that's a good thing for me and for society overall.