But when you add up all the digital pennies you end up with a top line that is a fraction of what today’s top line subscription revenues look like. This is only due in part to the fact that we’ve trained consumers to expect stuff for free. The other more important fact is that so many people are willing to create and distribute quality content (and services) for free. Think of how much excellent news analysis is being created on top-quality blogs, for example. yes the authors would like to get some form of payment for the content but for them to do so would necessarily cut into their traffic and harm them on the advertising side. And we’ve reached the point where top bloggers can make a six-figure income from advertising alone.

This may be bad news for newspapers and for journalism as a profession (because many fewer of them will be able to make a living), but I’m not yet convinced it’s bad news for body politic.

This pay wall thing is like an Albuquerque Trial Balloon Festival. Unfortunately, consumers keep shooting them down as unreasonably greedy attempts to make money where it was not made before.

Give us content worth reading, and we’ll visit. Advertisers will eventually figure out that it’s worth it.

Keep trying to Wall Street us, and you can forget it. (Not referring to the WSJ, but the attitude that there’s always more blood to squeeze from the consumer turnip.)

They won’t pay, however, for commodity news (celebrity, financial headlines, etc.) that can be found anywhere. In some ways, blogs and other sites trying to attract attention to themselves use the production of commodity content as a loss leader to draw eyeballs.

Interestingly, consumers also show a willingness to pay “by platform”. So while they expect everything to be free on the PC, they will pay for delivery to mobile, Kindle, etc.