Would You Pay for Blog Content?

Dmitry thinks paying a set fee to read all the blogs in a network is a good idea. I'm all for paying good authors for content I find interesting, but this would be much like buying a cable TV package—paying for a bunch of crap stuff that doesn't interest me as well. How about a blog network where the reader chooses a selection of blogs and pays only for those, with a set minimum price.

Readers still get the low price with no micropayments and only one subscription, but pay only for what they read. Authors still get paid for their content, but the more popular authors will be paid proportionate to their readership.

What would it take to do this? A central site, run as a membership site, that handles all aspects of membership, subscriptions, and payments. A blog plugin or code snippet that the blog owner inserts into their template, which checks the central site. The reader views a protected page, the central site is queried, and the reader sees the content, is prompted to log in, is shown a teaser, or is shown the content with ads. Each blog owner could choose how their content is protected.

If you take on this project, be sure to send me my cut for the idea.