Now that someone has actually broken the news on a site (rather than just on a mailing list), I think it’s time I gave my opinion on the proposed “Premium Blogger” that is rumoured to cost $30 a year. Bear in mind that at the time of posting, there has been no word from Pyra on this app. There’s a discussion over at Metafilter, but here’s my take on it as posted to UKBloggers:
“The big question then is going to be do you have any idea about how this premium stuff is going to work? I had a long conversation with megnut when she was still with blogger about what their plans were with Blogger Pro – which this sounds very much like – and the big issue seemed to be what you’re getting people to pay for… For example – are you paying for a premium membership with as many blogs as you like? In which case how do you stop people disseminating the log-in details to run a hundred blogs from the same account? If you ARE running a premium blog – do other people who are allowed to post on the same blog have to pay to use it? Is there a difference between a user who runs fifty blogs each with a thousand posters on each and one who runs one weblog which he posts to every month. Etc. etc.
“There are many more questions – particularly for people whose sites consist of several blogs bolted together…
“I’d pay in an instant. Particularly for extra functionality. But I’m interested in what the service will include. I think there are various ways they could go… five blogs perhaps with a maximum of twenty users between them (for example) would be a good system as far as I was concerned. But there WILL be consolidation of individuals using them.
“Having said that it’s still better to have three users paying $10 each than three users paying nothing…”