Spiegel Online offers an interesting interview with Chris Anderson. Anderson is Editor of Wired Magazine and also author of the recently released Free (actually free from Scribd). An interesting side bar on the first page indicates the interesting contradiction of a magazine arguing that media (note Anderson does not like to use traditional terms) is moving toward free. The side bar indicagtes that Wired magazine ad has fallen by 40%.
They use free content to attract large audiences and then convert some of them to paid content. The idea is: Don’t charge for the most popular stuff. And never charge for exclusives because if you wall off the exclusives and other people report on your exclusive, they’ll get the traffic and you won’t. Instead charge for the niche stuff that some people will pay for.
