I agree with you Adam. You may offer some minimal service for free but your focus has to be based on converting trial versions to paying customers.

Not only that but psychologically users may value your service more if you require them to pay. If you don't value your service neither will they.

Second. In order for a site to make thousands in ad revenue it would take tons and tons of traffic. However if you had just 1,000 paying users which is not that many considering the amount of people online and you charged each on $5 a month you would make $5,000 a month. that's $60,000 a year.

Then as you get more customers you can include ad revenue as another revenue source and make even more money.

A purely ad revenue model is not a sustainable model for the service industry. It might be for things that are entertainment based but if you've got a service you've got to charge.
Aaron | Homepage | 01.26.07 - 1:03 pm | #