London-based Rafat Ali, who is the founder, editor, and publisher of PaidContent.org has a unique perspective about charging for online content, and is the subject of my January Publishing: Free to Fee column, published today at Internet.com’s ClickZ. – Vin Crosbie
During the past 10 days, we’ve been taking time away from consulting and also from posting here. Instead, we’ve been working on two new projects: A report about paid online content (which we plan to publish next month); And a report about…
Although last month I harshly questioned the Albuquerque Journal‘s, decision to charge for access to its Web site, I think that the individual steps that Donn Friedman, the newspaper’s Assistant Managing Editor for Production Technology and New Media Innovations, had formulated deserve…
We notice that Ireland.com, the Web site of The Irish Times of Dublin, has begun putting more stories in front of its paid content gate. Is this a bit more of a retreat from its paid access content model? A way to…
EditorAndPublisher.com today has a nice feature interview with George Dratelis, the Ottaway Newspapers (a Dow Jones & Co. subsidiary) corporate Internet marketing director. Two highlights: “I find it amazing that some newspapers are foregoing the growth opportunities all together and moving into…
Online Journalism Review‘s lead story today is a first-person account by Albuquerque Journal Assistant Managing Editor (for production technology and new media innovations) Donn Friedman about why his newspaper’s Web site switched from free to paid access. After reading it, we posted…
We thank the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania for quoting us in Selling Content on the Internet: It
A mountaineer who takes cover during a storm or avalanche doesn’t feel a great sense of accomplishment when he returns to where he last was in his ascent. Although it’s great to survive, it’s not really progress. That was my feeling too…
Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org a few days ago pointed us to a good essay by John Blossom, entitled Pencil Sharpening: Why Paid Content Struggles to Define Meaningful Price Points. We agree with what Blossom writes, notably about how publishers are wrongly pricing…
Coincidental to the subject of whether the Financial Times has been “proving that people will pay for valuable content” (see our previous item for the source of that quote), Mitch Ratcliffe speculates that the FT‘s newly expanded deals with Yahoo! Finance and…
Emily Bell of Guardian Online won The UK Association of Online Publishers‘s best Consumer Editor Award and David Molony of Emap Media’s TotalTele.com won the best Business Editor Award. The Web site of the Financial Times won 2003 AOP Chairman’s Award for…
In the current edition of the M.10 report, Ned Desmond, executive editor of Time Inc. Interactive, called offering free online content a “shabby proposition.” M.10 now gives response from CBS MarketWatch Founder and CEO Larry Kramer, Maxim Online General Manager Roger Munford,…
We’re making available from this site some of the essays about New Media that we’ve written for other sites. Below is a one we wrote for JupiterMedia’s ClickZ.com’s Publishing Free to Fee column. Originally published there on 18 June 2002, it explains the three criteria that sites should use when deciding to charge for content.
We’ll be moderating the online publishing panel at the Micropayments Conference on Monday, November 3rd, in New York City. Because this conference is being organized by Peppercoin, a micropayments system vendor, we were initially skeptical that this conference would become a sales…
Scott Moore, president of MSNBC.com tells MediaBistro.com why Slate and MSNBC won’t switch to a paid subscription business model and why he dislike the current Web site audience rating systems. Our analysis: He’s a bright guy who’s worked his way up through…
Skepticism widens about the Online Publishers Association‘s latest report about the growth of American consumers’ purchases of online content. Clay Shirky, Rafat Ali, Barry Parr, and Rich Gordon echo the criticisms we began making a year ago, and recently reiterated, about the…
The Online Publishers Association has released its latest hope-filled and hype-filled update of its questionable figures about the growth of paid online content in the US. We write the monthly Publishing: Free to Fee columns for JupiterMedia’s ClickZ.com, so we think we…
Here is something that is bound to upset publishers who are now charging for archival access to their Web pages: The WayBack Machine search engine at Brewster Kahle‘s Internet Archives project has added keyword search capabilities. This makes it much more articulate…
The number of paid subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal Online rose 3.9% when measured June-to-June, to 671,000. However, it’s actually shrunk since its all-time high of 679,000 at the end of last year.
Adrian Holovaty shows the security holes in the paid-access firewall at The Wall Street Journal and Salon sites and at The New York Times‘ archives.
Celebrating its tenth anniversary of publishing on the Web but without profiting from banner advertising during that period, the Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita on its online anniversary began charging for access to its online news archives. To access its archives, a customer…
Editor and Publisher magazine quotes us this week about how publishers are using SMS for delivery of content and also for billing.
At the World Association of Newspaper Annual Congress in Dublin this week, the Albuquerque Journal was presented as an example of a successful paid-access newspaper Web site. Its editor Donn Friedman said that during the past two years the site has grown…
Our latest Publishing: Free to Fee? column examines the arithmetic necessary in making a decision to charge for an online archive or not.
ABC News has removed its live feed from Yahoo Platinum and made RealNetworks the only Internet hub with its around-the-clock Webcast, according to The Wall Street Journal [a paid-subscription Web site] yesterday. Yahoo Platinum will continue to offer other streaming television programs…
Speaking of Dave Winer, his weblog says that the the news archives of The New York Times, which are currently kept behind a paid content firewall, will be opened to webloggers’ hyperlinks. NY Times Digital last year began syndicating its news feed…
Is the newspaper industry determined to convince itself that charging for access to its online content is a good idea? To reach that conclusion, it seems determined to overlook all facts, data, and logic about the subject. For example, here is the…
There’s an interesting article in American Journalism Review about whether or not newspapers should implement user registration and/or charge for online content. Registration makes sense (hello, did anyone remember why NYtimes.com announced in 1995 why it implementing registration?). But charging for all…
According to a story in the bulletin of the Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association), few Japanese online publications are charging for content or have had success doing that. For instance, Asahi Shimbum on March 3rd began charging…
David Astor, syndication columnist for Editor & Publisher Magazine, has written a column [which unfortunately might by now be hidden behind VNU’s paid archive wall] about how My Comics Page gained 10,000 new paid subscribers this spring. MCP now serves 25,000 paid…
Spain and England are where the most interesting experimentation about paid-access Web content business strategies are underway. There is an interesting story in Online Journalism Review about the Spanish market.
CNET’s News.com recently reported that webzine Salon.com has now generated 35,000 paying subscribers for its Salon Premium services. Indeed, Salon’s press release announcing that level of paying subscribership received favorable play in trade press for online publishing. That’s too bad, because some…