Plugin providers - why do you allow free sites?

[Far-L]

Originally posted by cj@Apr 7 2005, 05:07 PM
Far-L, that sounds like the best way to attack it from the content providers perspective ....

that way you don't piss off or lose either client base ...

i don't think a feed provider should sell the same stuff for both free and paysites, but if a free site can pay the bandwidth you can't be expected to turn them down ...

do you have the same bandwidth usage system for free sites as for paysites? how do you bill them, ie what format? paysite is 1-300 members style system + bandwidth fee, so how does free site feed billing work?

Thank you CJ; we are certainly concerned about keeping the customers happy and that was the only way we could come up with.

Paysite owners don't like paying on a bandwidth based price plan but in truth if they look closely then they would realize our bw plan is way cheaper in the long run... and especially if they are or could be a high volume site. Many still just buy into the way it was back when bw was really expensive and security was not tight... back then... if a paysite got hacked (or was secretly dumping passwords to generate traffic) the paysite owner would freak when all of a sudden they would be hit with a huge bill for content. So still to this day, providers and paysites play a tug of war based on number of users.

The freesite folks like Leo understand high volume and bw much better so he is primarily concerned with his price based on bw.

I liken the pros and cons of this argument to the analogy of free tv vs. pay cable television. Ultimately, people watch both. Of course, money is made with both business models. And to finally answer your question, we use windows media for all our feeds and do have bw monitoring available to all our clients.