[ergo98]

>Flickr's probably quite a good example of this.

Flickr had contextual ads since, I believe, day one. Then they added paid accounts and I subscribed and have never regretted it.

I've been a paid "pro" subscriber to Flickr for many years, trusting them with my media (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dforbes/4657268471/ <- one of my sons nibbled by a goat!) because I had faith that they had a coherent, sustainable business strategy.

Similarly I have faith in Gmail because I can see they aren't struggling to find a revenue model.

I don't trust services that are saving a revenue model until "sometime later", especially where the service has any sort of lock-in or inconvenience if they get bored and move on. Such a make-money-later strategy usually arrives with very negative changes when the day of reckoning comes: It is essentially a bait and switch tactic (one that PG is a big advocate of), and really I view as deceptive, even if it gets a big enough user base that you can flip it to some VCs.

"All blogs now served with free pop-under advertisements!"

[Terretta]

> I don't trust services that are saving a revenue model until "sometime later" ... essentially a bait and switch tactic

Ning! Ning! We have a winner!