Quite a number of bloggers are discussing the idea of charging readers to access content, particularly blogs. Sahar Sarid's mindful research and analysis of the trends in the business models of Newspapers, Radio and Television boil down to the point that a subscription based revenue model is "inevitable" for the blogosphere.

However, as Scott points out, one cannot generalize on such facts in the case of blogging or for that matter any online service that provides content in the form of text, images, audio or video as the Web has been around for more than a decade and most content online is still free. Also, the paid media business models such as newspapers and magazines have lost considerable amount of audience to the free ad-supported online media.

According to Scott, only those content providers such as Seth Godin and Darren Rowse, whose content is equivalent to what one may get from a paid consultant, can take advantage of the subscription based business model.

Also, only those blogs/websites with a decent amount of popularity can take advantage of this business model as content behind pay walls are hard to get linked to from other websites/blogs and definitely impossible to get indexed thereby resulting in a poor readership.