Can you sell information online?

It’s the holy-grail for many companies. Lots have tried, few have succeeded, since I’ve long argued that people have a relatively small “informatiion budget.” Too many people are used to information that is free. But is there still a market?

But having said that, I just signed up for Accuweather Professional, which involves a monthly/annual fee. As a weather junkie, I’ve long been a fan of the columns by a fellow named Joe Bastardi. His long range predictions are usually spot on.

He has something like 100,000 loyal readers of his daily column. They decided to move him off to a pay site, along with a lot of other specialized information for weather junkies and amateur meteorologists.

And the thing is, it seems to be working. I just signed up. I tried to go a week without, but just couldn’t do it.

Maybe there is a small information budget out there. The information has to be a) extremely popular, b) niche oriented c) unavailable anywhere else d) be very specific in terms of the type of content.