One of the hallmarks of web based applications in the last few years is the cost – for the most case they've been free to the users. Of course someone must pay for all the servers, coders and everything else needed to run a company. While the good times and the VC investment money flowed in, many companies have focused on growing the user base rather than build practical foundations of income. But are we in for a shock as our favourite applications start to reach into our pockets?

Many have heard of the classic pitch of:

• Stage 1: Really wacky idea (such as a video messaging system that works like IM)

• Stage 3: Profit!!!

The catch is always what happens at stage 2, and the standing joke for many a year was “Stage 2: Google Ads” With the economy slowing down it's getting harder for niche sites with relatively low traffic to generate income streams. And when you have no external source of recurring revenue, when the VC money runs out, who you gonna call?

You're gonna call on the users to pay.

And that's what I expect to happen in many services over the next year or so, and one of the hardest tasks to work on successfully is how to make someone pay for something that was free, especially when that something had the perception of being free for all time.

There will be a small number of companies that have got the business plans sorted and are now running at a profit – there will also be deals to have your service embedded on a device as it leaves the factory, but it's not going to be as easy to survive as it was just two years ago.

One company facing up to this with honesty is Shozu, a web service and on-device smartphone client that uploads media to your social networks. While it has a large existing user-base that it's not going to ask for money from, any new user to the service will have to pay for the application. It's a small step, but I'm expecting to see more web services to work on alternative revenue streams in the near future.

Even the Ovi ecosystem isn't immune, with Files on Ovi having a small monthly subscription charge (7 euros, after the 60 day trial period), and of course Nokia taking a slice of the purchase of everything sold through the Ovi Store. There will probably be more inventive solutions dreamed up by agile companies, but the old adage of “follow the money” is going to be a popular question online during 2009 and 2010.

It was never really a free ride, so there's no free ride to end – it's just that the largest untapped potential funding base, the users, is about to be tapped, and many CEO's will be crossing their fingers and hoping that the well is plentiful and happy, as opposed to being a small trickle followed by a flood of angry users who feel emboldened now they've handed over the cash.

-- Ewan Spence, June 2009.