[PaulHoule]

Hard to say.

Part of the appeal of advertising in Cosmpolitan or the New York Times is that the readers have qualified themselves by paying for a subscription.

Netflix is playing a dangerous game by letting people pay to turn on ads because the kind of person who values their attention so little to save a few dollars isn’t going to buy anything. The really desirable people to advertise to are the ones who have more money to spend.

My guess is that a person who subscribes to the entry level of a product is more likely to be upsold to something else than a free user is going to even think about paying. (e.g. try watching TV during the daytime and it is depressing to see ads for prescription drugs and Medicare scams and personal injury lawyers, the one thing you might rarely see that people spend their own money on is car dealerships and I guess they need those because I’d nobody bought a car you could never get hit by a car and call William Mattar.)

[Semiapies]

My guess is that a person who subscribes to the entry level of a product is more likely to be upsold to something else than a free user is going to even think about paying.

I think this is the crucial thing. If you offer a service with what you might call a "livable" or "comfortable" free tier, it will end up used as heavily as you allow by people who will cost you resources indefinitely, but who are far more likely to switch to another free service than to ever pay you a cent. For instance, as terrible as this blogger claims to have found Feedly, he used it for nearly a decade!

Skip the temptation to try to eke out a little money from the free tier (because you probably won't) and think of it strictly as a trial option. Either give a time-limited free trial of the service or a heavily-limited version of the service that shows how it works, but that absolutely nobody would want to use at that level forever.

(And in that latter case, then you'll still find one or two users who are willing to subsist on your free tier, whether that's a 3-feed RSS reader or whatever. Shrug and reflect that those weirdos aren't costing you much.)

[bayindirh]

I don't agree that having a comfortable free tier inhibits upward movement in the subscription structure of a service.

I've started all the services I pay from their free tiers. Most notable examples are Evernote, Trello, Dropbox and Pocket. As I continued using these tools, I've overgrown them, and the features they offer on subscription tiers started to make sense.

As a result, I've directly bought the highest tier of service which both makes sense and I can afford.

Feedly is different in that regard. They provide a free service, nag me, insert ads into the stream, all at the same time.

Turn down nagging, keep the ads, that's OK. Add a time trial, don't sell ads, that's OK too. But they bombard you, and it comes down to "pay us or go away", and I went away. Not in a decade, but in a week.

I'm a fan of "small web". Simple services which do one thing, and do it well. Simplymail, Source Hut, Mataroa, Smol.pub, etc. They're also paid services, and I also pay for some of them. It's a simple transaction. $X for a year, no tracking, no funny data business, for these services. This is beyond elegant.

I found out that I have got enough of the modern web, with sites overloading my senses and doing all kinds of funny business with my information even if I pay them.

Feedly is a business, they want to earn money and provide services, that's fair. They can operate the way they want, and I'm not entitled to tell them how to operate, or force them. On the other hand, they're not entitled to my money or continued patronage because I opened an account on their service and gave a test drive.

[WastingMyTime89]

> The really desirable people to advertise to are the ones who have more money to spend.

The people you want to advertise to are not necessarily people who have money. It’s people who will buy your product. That’s the supposed value of online advertising: better targeting. There is still plenty of money to be made outside of the most affluent segments.

> My guess is that a person who subscribes to the entry level of a product is more likely to be upsold to something else than a free user is going to even think about paying.

That’s true. But you still need a way to onboard people on the first paying tier at some point.

> try watching TV during the daytime and it is depressing to see ads for prescription drugs and Medicare scams and personal injury lawyers

That’s because of the demographic who watch TV during daytime: mostly retired people or unemployed people amongst which disabilities must be above average. Forty years ago you will have bombarded with ads for soap.