There is a lot of yammering going on about the supposed erection of a paywall at the New York Times with their blogs being stuck behind it.
Personally I think this is a stupid idea and one that will come back to bite them on the ass – hard. However Michael Masnick over at Techdirt raised an interesting point in a post this morning.
But this leads to a rather fascinating question that one of Samon’s readers asks in the comments (unfortunately, it looks like Reuters doesn’t let you link directly to comments): if a blog post drives traffic to the NY Times, and that counts against the quota of “free” articles, leading users to eventually sign up for the paywall, will the blogger get a cut of the paywall fee? After all, isn’t part of the argument from newspapers upset with aggregators that they’re getting some sort of “free ride”? Wouldn’t the same apply in reverse? If newspapers, such as the NY Times, are getting direct revenue from an action initiated by a blogger, then by the newspapers’ own convoluted logic, don’t those newspapers owe money to the bloggers?
As silly as this might sound on the surface when you really think about it there is a certain validity to the suggestion.
Sounds very much like you’re proposing an affiliate arrangement to me.
.-= Paul OFlaherty´s last blog ..Why I’m Not PC In This Online World =-.