Before the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, the industry was replete with internet business moguls of the time stating (or rather, yelling) GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY! THE CUSTOMER WILL RECIPROCATE!

Well, we all know that went over like a lead zeppelin. Nobody reciprocated at all and the industry took its lumps in grand fashion (to the tune of losing their shirts).

With today’s internet we have a relatively even mix of paid and free stuff.

Here’s my short list of stuff that’s worth paying for and what isn’t.

Flickr

Worth paying for? Yes.

Flickr, a Yahoo! company, is worth the yearly subscription fee for avid photographers whether amateur or professional. The best part about Flickr is that you can basically try everything on a free account before actually buying. Normally what most sites do is block specific features unless you pay. Not Flickr. You get access to it all and are more or less paying for more ability to upload and unlimited storage. If you need it, it’s there and the yearly subscription fee is fair.

Email

Worth paying for? No.

It was once true that people used paid email accounts primarily for larger storage space. But now all providers has gobs and gobs of email storage. The only thing you truly pay for in email is to remove ads – and simply put, that’s not a good sell. Sure, you may get other features like POP access, larger attachment ability and some other odds and ends, but the primary reason people do it is for ad removal. Not good enough.

Online Dating

Worth paying for? Yes.

Those looking for love online already know about the freebies Plentyoffish, OkCupid and Craigslist. They’re all terrible because they attract the bottom-of-the-barrel dregs of society. And no, I’m not accusing you of being one if you use those sites, but you know that there are more bad apples than good ones at those places.

Those who pay for online dating generally do meet better people. Whether it’s Yahoo! Personals, Match, eHarmony or the like, if you’re willing to put some green into it, the results are usually much better.

Video Sharing / Broadcasting

Worth paying for? No.

Video sharing sites fall under the same category as email in the respect that paying for it doesn’t really get you that much more. Vimeo Plus for example gives you 5GB of upload space per week, the removal of ads plus other features. But is that worth almost $60 a year? To most people it isn’t.

blogTV has also recently introduced a pro account. Once again, the allure of "no ads" is present, a "badge" (which is worthless), 8 new emoticons (also worthless) and some other features that most likely aren’t worth whatever the cost is.

Web Hosting

Worth paying for? Yes.

If you have your own web site or blog with your own domain name attached to it, yes it’s worth paying for basic virtual hosting. It’s better than running your own web server out of your house, you can install additional things like forums, experiment with PHP and MySQL, manage email lists, install lots of different apps (many of which are free) and a whole plethora of other stuff. Web hosting is not technically an "app" but rather a whole bunch of apps.

Web hosting is admittedly a geeky thing. But you have to be geeky to run a web site anyway so it’s par for the course.

I’ll put it to you this way: There’s a lot you can get for web hosting for just 5 bucks a month.

Most of you out there already pay for e-mail and probably aren’t even aware of it. If you are the primary account holder for your internet service (meaning the service is in your name and you pay each bill as it comes due), your ISP does include e-mail service. E-Mail is part of the package so yes, you do pay for it.

What is the single largest difference between using a free webmail account from a provider (such as Yahoo, Microsoft or Google) and your included from-ISP e-mail? The difference is that your ISP has an obligation to keep the e-mail service running whereas the free providers do not. Continued