[masklinn]

> If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel loudly.

If you lock behind a paywall things previously available for free, sure. And they'll be right too.

An other option is to add features which are only behind a new paywall. Issue then is providing additional services of value and a way for users to discover them.

[thaumaturgy]

Just as a case study, Reddit did exactly that, and their users flipped out. Reddit ended up doing OK with it -- they've made at least enough from it to be able to afford some infrastructure upgrades and at least one new hire -- but there was a pretty vocal not-small group of users that were unhappy about it.

[30thElement]

The initial response was to flip out, but once people realized reddit wasn't going to switch to a pay-only site the outrage died down. It might have only worked because reddit users/admins try so hard to foster a sense of community, but it seemed to me like reddit showed how to set up a pay service correctly, and people were just too jaded because of sites like Scribd to realize it.

[thaumaturgy]

> ...once people realized reddit wasn't going to switch to a pay-only site the outrage died down.

I'm not very active in Reddit anymore -- HN is my last distraction now -- but I did watch that situation carefully because it was interesting. I got the sense that the outrage died down only because Reddit promised to migrate its paid features into the "free" arena. Until then, a lot of people were angry that there was going to be some kind of "elite" class on the site.

Practically speaking, even if Reddit had managed to permanently piss off this chunk of its userbase, I doubt they would have left altogether, and even if they did, there's no way to gauge what fraction of Reddit's traffic was really represented by these guys. It could've been (and probably was) just a tempest in a teapot.

But either way, in that specific case, there would have been some vocal rebellion if the paid-for features stayed locked behind a paywall.

[masklinn]

> I got the sense that the outrage died down only because Reddit promised to migrate its paid features into the "free" arena. Until then, a lot of people were angry that there was going to be some kind of "elite" class on the site.

As a Charter and gold reddit member... not really. It was well understood early on that most of the "gold" features would be stuff that was too expensive (computationally) to give to everybody (especially before the server upgrade), at least from the start.

The great fear gripping everybody was truly that Reddit would somehow become "for-pay", and that content previously free would now become non-free (a fear which didn't make much sense as the community is the one providing the content, and the admins might not be too media and ad-savvy, but they're not stupid)

> But either way, in that specific case, there would have been some vocal rebellion if the paid-for features stayed locked behind a paywall.

Doubtful. 1000 comments/thread is a nice feature for instance, but it didn't exist (at all) before gold and it's not exactly a deal-breaker.

[jacquesm]

Just another case study, I did that too and it worked like a charm. (adding features, and charging for those).

[jasonlotito]

Reddit Gold? Yeah, not the same thing as what Scribd is doing here.

Edit: Was mistaken. Assumed the parent was responding to the entire comment, rather than just a part.

[teaspoon]

The parent was pretty clearly in response to, "An other option is to add features which are only behind a new paywall."

[jasonlotito]

Ahh, true. I read it as a reply to the entire comment, not a specific part (mostly because that's the way it was formatted), but you are correct. I'll edit my original comment. Thanks. =)