Almost from its earliest moments, the big question about the internet was how to make money from it. It remains a huge question today, with much of the focus now on getting people to pay for content when there is so much free content out there. One authority on the subject is journalist  Rafat Ali, founder of PaidContent.org, which he started while working for the Silicon Alley Reporter. At first it was a place to post information he wasn't using in the stories he wrote about monetizing web content. Now the site is Ali's chief effort, and working from London he combines original reporting, commentary and links to outside sources in an the issue of selling digital content. He spoke to Media Life recently on the changing face of the internet and emerging ideas on how to generate revenue from it.

 It depends. The stories I break are pretty big ones in the industry. But the blog, where I link to other stories and releases, is still the main driver. 
   More and more, I am now breaking stories. Still, I can't go around digging up lots of original stories, because I can only work so much. Plus, if others are doing the effort for me, why duplicate? 
   It is about efficiencies of effort. My credibility is a balance of my own original efforts and others as well.

  Digital media and entertainment companies, as well as software and tech vendors who target these companies.

   Well, I am a journalist, so besides one doomed business venture in online content,  back when I was still in college  in 1999, I haven't really done much in terms of business development before this. 
   I have been writing on online media since 1997, so I do have a good grasp of how things have gone within the industry. I was at Inside.com when it experimented with charging, and that went under.

   Well, it was a combination of bad business skills of the journalists running it, bad timing, which I guess comes under business skills, and a lack of focus. 
  It should have been more media trade, but it tried to go for gossipy bits. Nobody wants to pay for gossip when Romenesko is still around and now Gawker. 
  Plus we didn't get enough time to prove the business. Primedia wanted to wash it off their hands pretty quickly.
  These days when people come to me for advice, I tell them that I am groping through this as everybody else is, though I do have a good grasp of micro and macro trends.
   Do I use those lessons in my own business? Not very consciously, though I am more cautious, since this is a one-person enterprise. I control the costs very tightly.

   Right now I do not have any subscription revenue. All of the revenue comes from advertising and sponsorships. That may change in the future as I perhaps restrict access to the archives and develop ancillary products like in-depth analysis. 
  I have plans to do events -- small and focused sub-one-day events, but nothing has panned out yet. Funny thing is, I have sponsors backing the events, and a couple of vendors are interested in doing webinars as well. But I just don't have the time.

    Advertising is still the predominant revenue stream and will remain so. I think pay-per-view will in a matter of few years develop to be the next ladder up, and then subscription will come next. Of course, this is mainly true for mainstream content.
   More and more, it won't be about models. It will be about diversification of revenues--more avenues of distribution, more ways to get revenues out of each of those distributions streams. Tools and services built around content will be the big differentiator, as people get overloaded with all kinds of information.

   To some extent, yes. Is there enough good things I would like to pay for online? Frankly, no. 
  Does the presence of Amazon's easy one-click buying mean that the book industry revenues as a whole are increasing? Probably yes. But things are more endemic than that. I wish I could point to one thing, but there isn't. Every site has different issues.
   Besides, there are too many extraneous factors beyond your control, such as availability of other choices and economic issues. But the important thing is to not listen to social trends reports. Whenever I hear the word Pew, as in Pew Internet Project, I want to go out and puke.

   Well, I can only believe what I see around. Kids here in Europe do nothing else except play with their phones. What was dead time is now mobile time. 
   It is only a matter of time before the same is true in U.S. When this generation grows up, what will happen to other forms of media? 
  The good thing is that, unlike the internet, people have grown up to expect to pay for wireless services. But not all forms of content will work on wireless devices. It will be mainly entertainment and major-event driven services.

   For audio, especially music, it seems that micropayment/a la carte services are going to work, the reason being that the disappointment factor is close to zero. 
  Somebody who is shelling out a dollar for a song has probably already heard it on radio, online or offline, or has heard clips. 
   But to extrapolate that model beyond music would be foolish. Financial news/info and sports are emerging to be the two big revenue-generating sectors online. The former is work-necessity driven, the latter is loyalty driven. 
  Opinion may be a difficult sector to drive, since advertisers stay away from these things generally. Subscribers will only come in only for the big names like talk show personalities.

   At this point, it seems most news sites/operations can still be pared down in terms of staff and especially in terms of operational costs of running a site. 
  If the whole weblogging thing has taught us anything, it is that costs of running something online can be cut down drastically.

   It already is. Advertising will always be the biggest revenue generator. I have always maintained that not getting advertising is a business development problem.

   Can't say I have many. It is still early.
   Sites like FT.com and CBS MarketWatch, which have a god mix of revenue streams, are well positioned. I love Audible, but they need to some more visibility.

   I am not in the ranking game, but I have to say RealNetworks. It was doing pretty well in the last year or so but now seems to be confused about its identity. It's going through somewhat of an existential crisis and a brain drain on the consumer side of things. They were trying to be all things to all people, and they seem to be realizing the folly in that.

   I will say that it is not at all like a blog. It is just an industry-focused vertical. 
   The fear of blogging is the fear of linking to other sources besides yours, sending your readers away to other sites. It is an old, old fear, which started with hyperlinks being invented with the internet, but it is still there. 
  Once media companies overcome that fear, they will realize the potential in developing these vertical sites into much more cost-efficient operations, using blogs and the blog ethic, as I call it, the ethic of open-source journalism.