Charging for the news

[andrewducker]

A whole bunch of papers have recently been talking about ways they can make money from their websites.  I've not, generally, seen good ways for them to do so.  Going pay-only means that you lose the vast majority of your subscribers.

The Economist, however, seems to have found a compromise that might just work.  Everything over 90 days is pay only.  And so is the main contents page of the print edition.

Which means you can see a page from the most recent issue if someone links to it.  And you can see a few major stories via the front page.  But if you want to find your way to the rest of it - you'll need to pay for it.  Which is just annoying enough that, if you're the kind of person who _wants_ to read The Economist on a regular basis you'll pay for it.

It strikes me as a good balance - nicely done.

Comments

[drplokta]

It breaks the Internet, because all the people who link to Economist articles will find that the links stop working after ninety days.

[andrewducker]

That's not their problem though, is it?

[drplokta]

It is if everyone stops linking to them and they drop out of Google, so they lose most of their ad revenue. They're gambling that subscription revenue will more than make up for it, and most people who've tried that gamble have lost.

[andrewducker]

Depends on how many people worry about link rot. If you're linking to an article for your friends to read today/tomorrow then you're not going to care. If you're linking because you want to be able to refer to it 90 days from now then yes, you'll care. But I suspect that's a niche use. I guess we'll see :->

[broin.livejournal.com]

Academic usage and Wikipedia citations.

[andrewducker]

So, two fairly niche applications that don't drive much traffic.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Citation. ;)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

That might work for the economist - but I suspect many of their articles have a longevity that other paper's articles might not.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

And also that a large proportion of their readers are businesspeople who can put it on expenses.

I do find this implication that out-of-date articles are more valuable than timely ones to be curious.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's that they're more valuable, but rather that they do have value that some will pay for (which I think is true - for some specialist media but not most media).

[terminalmalaise.livejournal.com]

Hmm, sounds pretty similar to the model the NY Times gave up two years ago...

[andrewducker]

Except that The Times decided to stop because people were arriving via links - you'll still be able to do that with The Economist - just not for old articles. If most incoming visits are via new articles then that's fine.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I know some sites that do it the other way round, charge for recent content. Some sort of mix does seem sensible: something to draw people in, and then, once they're already happy with you, something they want to pay for.

[andrewducker]

That's what kept me paying a Slate subscription for two years.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Here's why it won't work, for everything:

http://www.metafilter.com/85761/How-To-Save-Media#2776753

[andrewducker]

Doesn't apply to magazines that rich people want access to. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times both follow that model - and both pull in large quantities of cash (WSJ has about a million subscribers paying $110 a year).

I'd argue that The Economist is more like those papers than The Sun, which would have real problems trying to go subscriber only.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I'm not saying it will or won't work for that paper. It's just a fun checklist for *every* aged news conversation.

[andrewducker]

Aaah - fair enough :-> I think I react badly to it because it's based on a similar one for spam and I've generally seen that one used to stop conversation rather than improve it. It's a good spin on it though :->

I do think that most papers are completely fucked when it comes to making money. They just don't have enough to sell that people want.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if you watch The Daily Show, but you've seen the one with Jason Jones visiting the New York Times, right?

And yeah, if they sold advertising that was dramtically more valuable than advertising elsewhere, it'd make sense. And when they used to have the only source of small ads, that was valuable.

I dunno. Every time I read an op-ed with no citations, or yet another celeb-obsessed frothing, or heavily biased analysis, I say fuck 'em.