I love this (and how ironic that it’s the NYT reporting this). The NY Times is talking about giving people a taste of a few articles a month and then charging for more articles. I’m sorry but didn’t they try this back in 2003 or 2004 (this was before TimesSelect)? What happened then? Oh, yeah, it FAILED.
Listen, NYT, I love you and all but you’ve got to really spend some time out in the real world. You’ve got two problems:
1) Everyone expects news to be free or cheap
2) You’re already giving it to peeps for free
I know advertising isn’t working, why would it in the Web 2.5 world?
What should you do, you ask? Well, I think it’s time for you to figure out what you’re business is. Are you out to make sure the world knows what’s going on…in…uh…the world? Or are you out to make money?
If the former, then you go girl. You’re there.
If the latter, well, I’ve got some news for you (no pun intended…okay, maybe it was): it’s going to hurt.
Why? Because if you really want to make some money in a world where banner advertising is as hip and modern as polyester pants and long lapels and information is king, then you’ve got to start charging for admission. Yes, you’re going to lose a lot of traffic and a lot of people but thems is the breaks.
After all, you wouldn’t print up a million copies of your print newspaper and just give it away for free…wait…you do? Promotional copies to sucker people into getting subscriptions? Okay, how’s that going for you? Subscriptions drooping?
Listen, you’ve got to decide what the benefits are to signing up for a sub and what that subscription should be. The old model you tried (and failed with) was dumb because you could just keep up to date on the news and never need to go back to the “archive” to view an article. Even so, people aren’t going to be happy about paying to view some older article.
You’ve got a community thing going, which is good, so, why not just tier it up so that you’ve got a freebie bottom tier that requires signup to get access to pretty much anything and gives them limited access (say only the main news thread). It allows people to sign up and get the news. Be sure to include access to community tools and forums. Give them a reason to keep coming back.
Next, create a couple of tiers above based on frequency. Let me sign up for a monthly fee ($3-5/mo) to get access to the bulk of the news items (various sections, articles, etc.). Give me something special like the ability to create my own news channel based on keywords or sections. Give me fewer ads to clutter up my life so I feel like the money was worth it. Give me special partner offers that give you some income but also aren’t stupid like magazine subscriptions and other bullshit. Oh and yes, for this and the freebie tiers, you can archive articles after a couple weeks or so and require me to pay some sort of premium to get “digital reprints” of articles. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Finally, offer a premium package. Charge something like $10/mo and give me full, unhindered access to recent and archived articles. Give me some other perks like a digital book of the month club that ties in with Kindle or Nook. Give me access to exclusive content (Sunday magazine-style articles and video!!).
And, through all this, give all of them tools to share the articles and get the word out there on Facebook and Twitter.
Oh, and about that article archive, roll a couple of one-off packages. $1.00 for 5 articles, $3.00 for 10, etc. If all I want is to grab a couple of articles, then I pay my $1.00 and have that credit until I use it up. I can grab that digital reprint which you can offer as a standard Web page when I’m viewing it in my account (logged in) and that can be shared amongst other NYT users. And, you can offer me a PDF version I can download and send around as well.
Remember, your ultimate user…the guy who’s going to really pay your bills, will be the one who sticks around, not the ones stumbling upon your doorstep because they searched for Michael Jackson or Haiti. Treat them right and they’ll pay. Keep the prices low (but frequently collected) and you can actually eek out a living. You can still have your advertising and the like but I’d suggest doing a more targeted sponsorship thing rather than dropping ads left and right from whoever will pay.
Now get out there kiddo and find yourself a business model…
Tags: New York Times