Comments on: Selling Online News

By: Money For Nothing (And Your Maureen Dowd For Free) « Around The Sphere

Money For Nothing (And Your Maureen Dowd For Free) « Around The Sphere — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:36:01 +0000

[...] James Joyner: I’d gladly pay $5a month to have the NYT delivered to me via the magic of the Internet. If this were 1995. Back then, the prospect of getting “the best newspaper in the world” delivered to my house and office in electronic format that I could easily save and share would have been exciting. Fast forward a few years, though, and there’s an amazing array of great content available for free on the Web. The only limitation is my ability to find and read it all. [...]

By: Herb

Herb — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:12:03 +0000

US News and World Report charges $19.95 for a subscription to their pdf magazine delivered on Friday Afternoon - plus a monthly special issue and access to their website. Compared to this $5 per month seems to be too much.

By: Eneils Bailey

Eneils Bailey — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:27:05 +0000

Selling On line News

The porn angle is interesting, but I would think they would have to down-size. They already have too many News Pimps, Whores, and Prostitutes on staff. Listen, these people could not give away their News and remain profitable with a good subscription and advertising base. They have lost a lot of the people who used to read newspapers. People just don't trust and like them anymore, is one reason. Other reasons certainly come into the equation; but foremost, people don't like to spend money with people they don't like and don't trust.

By: Gustopher

Gustopher — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:28:18 +0000

The only successful "for pay" sites on the Internet are porn sites.

International news and pornography. It could work. Given that the NY Times is also referred to as "The Gray Lady", that would suggest some kind of fetish site. That might limit the appeal, but demand higher prices.

By: Brett

Brett — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:41:28 +0000

I'd probably pay the $5 per month for the online NYT, but only if I could do it on a payment-by-payment basis (meaning I could decide to pay for it one month, then not the next month).

The main thing that burned me on most magazine subscriptions is the way they lock you into a long contract period.

By: Bill H

Bill H — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:18:13 +0000

The only successful "for pay" sites on the Internet are porn sites.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:25:13 +0000

I'd pay $5.00/year. I'd pay that for WaPo, LA Times, and a few others.

I think the need for micro-payments is larger than ever, but the right technology has yet to appear.

There are tons of places for which I'd pay a very small sum (measured in mils, not cents) to read an article, but I'm not ponying up $7.00 for some archived newspaper article.

Micro-payments would also permit the ultra-expensive scholarly journals to reach a far wider audience than their hundreds or thousands of dollars per year subscriptions now do.