Content is king - but that's not much use because the internet is more like a republic and an anarchic one at that. This is supposed to be pay-back year, when all the dot.coms start to recoup their huge investments by charging for their products. But how many are succeeding?

The best way to answer that is to ask yourself how much of your weekly budget is spent on unsullied new economy goods? That doesn't include books from Amazon or wine from Waitrose. They are old economy goods being purchased through the internet. Nor does it include software predating the web, especially where (like Microsoft) the manufacturer has a monopoly position.

Hardly anyone is making serious money out of selling truly digital goods - with the exception of ring tones and text messages. This is one of the paradoxes of the web. Attempts to make punters pay for whole songs through Napster and similar file-sharing companies have largely failed, while companies selling ephemeral ring tones are coining it.

This is partly because file-swapping among phone users is not so easy but mainly because it is easier to collect revenue for small items from pre-paid phones or from reverse billing (when the recipient pays a premium rate for receiving the call) than from the web. Meanwhile, email is still free apart from some modest successes in charging for premium services such as the £5 a year levied by www.friendsreunited.co.uk.

Search engines are still free, as are calendars, simple web building services and the vast mass of information on the web. The general rule is that if you have old economy intellectual property rights or unique content (say film rights) or subscription arrangements predating the web (like America Online) then it is easier to make payments stick. But for most products capable of being digitised - which makes the cost of manufacturing and delivering more copies almost zero - it is difficult to make payments stick.

Especially since the consumer can click to a free site if you start charging. The centrifugal forces pushing power to the edges of the web are still strong. We are still experiencing the dictatorship of the digitariat.

This also applies to old economy products that can be produced in digital form -like newspapers. I am pushed to think of a single paper making money out of a digital version. Even the Wall Street Journal, with its huge web subscriber base, has yet to make a profit.

In Britain, web newspapers are hanging on partly because they are reaching wider audiences (newspapers often prefer circulation to profits) but also because they are secretly hoping all the others will pull out of the market, allowing the survivor to start charging. But, even if there is only one web newspaper left in the UK, it will still have the awesome prospect of competing against the BBC website which is very good, costs nothing, and is free of advertisements.

My own digital purchases are sparse. They include friendsreunited, having one or two football results texted each week plus subscriptions to several internet service providers (two of which I don't need but haven't yet figured out which). And there were those ill-advised subscriptions for new domain names from a couple of years ago when we were all caught up in the gold rush.

All I say about my registering sites such as Wap4Wimps.com is that they seemed a good idea at the time but definitely not worth the £43.83p a year the company is demanding for re-registration.

Microsoft is leading the way to turn the world wide web into a revenue stream through its .Net project. But initially this is all about turning existing software applications (like Word and Excel) from one-off purchases into services rented from the web. Microsoft is also trying to put diaries and payments systems on to the web. Meanwhile, mobile phone service providers are trying to get us to send low resolution photos to each other's phones - at £1.50 a throw - and soon to send digital photos as well (the Nokia 7650 that does this is due in the spring).

On the evidence, mobile phone companies will find it easier to charge for digital products than their rivals on the web. They have an embryonic payments system for small purchases. And, coming on the scene later than the web companies, they also have second mover advantage.