GigaOm Adds Pro With Paid Subscription Service

Blog network GigaOm has announced the launch of a Pro service today. The Pro service is a premium paid subscription option available at $79/year. GigaOm founder Om Malik has a blog post which provides details on why he decided to launch the Pro service and what the service will offer.

Om discusses the importance of multiple sources of revenue and notes that their core competencies are, analyzing key technology trends and business news”. Sites like PaidContent sell research reports but the GigaOm Pro offering will be a bit different. The content areas will include:

• Weekly Updates
• Long Views
• Quarterly Wrap-ups
• Research Notes
• Research Briefings

There are 17 research reports available on the service today and Om says they will be adding more soon. What I liked about the PDF reports is the internal links inside the reports which link to content online.

It will be interesting to watch which pieces of content make it to the free site and which are pushed into the paid side. Normally my view is that companies should offer as little as possible for free to get customers to  upgrade — not sure that will work with a blog-freemium model. The key is to make sure that the paying customers always feel like they are getting something special over the content on the main GigaOm blogs.

I’d also look to integrate the “pro” option throughout the network of sites so that Pro users are recognized and new content can be pushed to them no matter where they are on the GigaOm network. Maybe even remove ads for Pro members and replace the ads with suggested/related content from the Pro site.