Google does have advertising – all the “sponsored links” off to the right-hand side. What makes these blend in is that they are not in loud colors or banner ads. What I despise is those “interstituals” which are the ads that crop up between pages – common on the NYTimes website.

I would pay for premium business info such as Hoovers.com or LexisNexis but usually the boss picks up the tab for these services. I also pay to list items on eBay and accept payments via PayPal but these are not info sites.

What holds me back from other sites is their efforts to shoehorn me into a subscription service – ie, hanging onto my credit card number and charging me every month whether I go on the site or not. This is definitely a barrier to entry that companies should offer a choice about rather than forcing on their readers.

One last site that offers good paid content – Morningstar for stock and mutual fund info.