what have i actually paid for on the internet?
- ebay listing fees. ebay is facilitating a real-world transaction with a real-money payoff.
- live365, radioparadise - streaming internet radio
- amazon - department store
- dating site - facilitates real-world meetings
- flickr pro account - hold more than 200 images
what i have never paid for 1. email (gmail) 2. calendaring (30boxes, upcoming.com, yahoo, google, etc etc) 3. craigslist. thats free for my classifieds stuff. the job-posters pay $25 a listing and that subsidies the rest of the site. while the free listings create readers and an audience for the jobs site as well as the classifieds. brilliant.
google's model is adsense revenue. its so profitable that it sustains a zillion off-shoot projects. dailywireless has shown that adsense revenue is hard to do on the scale of supporting someone full time.
in regards to 'catalog my stuff', show me the money! the flickr approach is probably the best. you can catalog 50 of your items and after that you can pay $25/year for all-you-can-eat.