Their Basic FREE service is now little more than a Business Card Web Page, with ads inserted and a forwarding email address.

The next step up is their Charter service which allows members 35mb of disk space with a monthly fee of $7.95. On top of that, there is also a set-up fee of $7.95.

It is VERY doubtful that they will continue to boast of nearly 1 MILLION members.

Especially when you consider that there are still many web sites around that provide same level of service for FREE on which Bizland.com wants to start charging a monthly fee.

A survey in our FBCN newsletter clearly showed that 100% of our 282 respondents, would NOT pay a fee for service or content they can aquire elsewhere for FREE.

Perhaps some online businesses can get away with now charging a FEE for previously FREE services or content.

However, any business playing with idea of changing their structure would do well to research competition.

The Internet was born on a FREE exchange of ideas.

I do feel we will NEVER see complete removal of all FREE based services from Internet.

However, it is only natural to presume that some online businesses MUST charge a fee or cease to exist.

Which ones will depend on unique type of service or content that they provide.

However, I predict that most valuable properties online will be those that have a business model based on BOTH FREE content and services, but with FEE based content and services that are much more enhanced.

The promise of a FREE service or content will continue to drive traffic to a web site. Once there, visitors will be given option of paying to receive PREMIUM or ENHANCED service and content.

That will be nature of , "The New Internet".

However, with recent demise of so many dot.com players, pendulum is attempting to swing in other direction.

This week another major player has announced that their once free service will no longer be free as of August 6th. If you have a list hosted on ListBot, http://www.listbot.com/, you will either need to make new arrangements to get it hosted by someone else or get ready to hand over around $150 per year.

What was once free yesterday may no longer be free tomorrow.

Considering need to become profitable online, trend is understandable. However, these dot.coms that are charging fees must keep in mind free nature of Internet and not ignore fundamental nature of that concept.

Yahoo, http://www.yahoo.com/, is an excellent example of a dot.com that began to charge fees but not for it's core service of search engine directory use.

Yes, if you want preferential treatment in getting listed on Yahoo you need to hand them almost two hundred dollars for privilege.

And, yes, they are "selling" you something on every web page that comes up with results of your online search.

It pays bills and still allows them to keep their original service free.

A compromise must be reached otherwise those faltering dot.com's and any Johnny come lately will find that in order to keep good will of their customers and potential customers, they must be given an incentive merely to visit web site.

Otherwise they will look elsewhere to still find it free.