McKinsey: What Matters: Will people pay for content online?
http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/the_debate_zone/will-people-pay-for-content-online

o Clay Shirky says “no, it’s too easy to obtain free content elsewhere on the Web” and Steven Brill says “yes, some consumers will pay for some content.” '

The Debate Zone: Will people pay for content online?

The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that "almost all" news organisations will be charging for online content within a year. Barber said building online platforms that could charge readers on an article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges facing news organisations. "How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air," Barber said in a speech at at a Media Standards Trust event at the British Academy last night. "But I confidently predict that within the next 12 months, almost all news organisations will be charging for content."

Point de vue du Financial Times sur l'évolution de l'actualité payante

Building payment platforms is one of key challenges facing news organisations, says Financial Times editor Lionel Barber

The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that “almost all” news organisations will be charging for online content within a year. Barber said building online platforms that could charge readers on an article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges facing news organisations.

NYT’s Tom Friedman says it best: “At some point we gotta charge for our product.”

New York Magazine Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fdaily%2Fintel%2F2010%2F01%2Fnew_york_times_set_to_mimic_ws.html

El NYT, a punto de implantar un modelo de pago en la web.

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

Newspaper: Valley Morning Star City: Harlingen, Texas Average paid circulation: 23,294 Pricing plan: Online-only subscriptions are available for 75 cents a day, $3.95 a month, or $39.50 for the year. Daily print subscribers get free access to web content and also to an e-edition of the paper. Weekend subscribers have to pay an additional $3.16 per month for online access, while Sunday-only subscribers have to pay $3.56 a month. Event listings, obituaries, AP stories, video, blogs, and classifieds all remain free.

As more newspapers kick around the idea of charging for content, much of the attention has been focused on the pay models employed by the bigger players like the WSJ and the Financial Times. But quietly, some small- and medium-circulation papers are coming up with their own formulas to get readers to pony up for access to their websites. We checked in with some of these papers to find out how much they are charging and how they’re faring.

paidContent: Taking The Plunge: How Newspaper Sites That Charge Are Faring <some figures beside #WSJ & #FT, mixed picture http://j.mp/5r14J [from http://twitter.com/frankhellwig/statuses/3816403648]

Alan Rusbridger/The Guardian, Jan. 25, 2010.

It removes you from the way people the world over now connect with each other. You cannot control distribution or create scarcity without becoming isolated from this new networked world.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmedia%2F2010%2Fjan%2F25%2Fcudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger

Guardian's Alan Rusbridger über den Journalismus des Jetzt

by Alan Rusbridger

utch blogger Marc Drees of Recruitment Matters has posted recap and commentary of this post, including a very nice graph summarizing my results:

Payer pour ses infos ? Selon Martin Langeveld, ça ne colle pas.

Mostly saving this for myself, but Warren had a great post talking about online pay models - and why even a universally adopted pay wall is a bad idea.

Isn't this collusion? A bunch of different newspaper to gather together and discuss monetization? http://bit.ly/6fwTW [from http://twitter.com/JMaultasch/statuses/1963825631]

"Executive recruiters likely do not swarm the industry for talent; certainly not in the same way they've gone after leaders at companies such as General Electric, Wells Fargo Bank or Microsoft over the years. Indeed, the June issue of Fast Company, a very sharp tech and business publication, features a cover story on "The 100 Most Creative People in Business." Perhaps I missed it but I don't think I saw a single newspaper executive mentioned. Why not? Now, more than ever, is a time for creativity and nerve, not just hunkering down and crossing fingers that safe harbor will appear on the horizon. It's a wonderful and important product, vital to American communities. Unlike a lot of jobs, you can look yourself in the mirror and know you're doing some good. Many newsrooms remain filled with a sense of mission even amid the looming dread.

"Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves. /.../ There's no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps, Advance Publications, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers, MediaNews Group, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises and Freedom Communication Inc., among more than two dozen in all. Ultimately, many in attendance will start charging for some online content because they don't know what else to do.

"Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves. There's no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps, Advance Publications, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers, MediaNews Group, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises and Freedom Communication Inc., among more than two dozen in all. A longtime industry chum, consultant Barbara Cohen, "will facilitate the meeting."

Here's a story the newspaper industry's upper echelon apparently kept from its anxious newsrooms: A discreet Thursday meeting in Chicago about their future. "Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves.

Jack Shafer/Slate, Feb. 18, 2009.

Inventing and refining the rich content that wants to be sold

News organizations should think outside the browser similarly to how iTunes, the Times Reader, and the Kindle do in order to create a stand-alone boutique environment for information consumption that users would more naturally pay for.

photo business model web site website payments payment charging for slate

The best model is a mix of free and paid You can’t charge for an exclusive that will be repeated elsewhere, Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site, Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches, the narrower the niche the better

Wofür kann man Geld nehmen und wofür nicht?

# The best model is a mix of free and paid # You can’t charge for an exclusive that will be repeated elsewhere, # Don’t charge for the most popular content on your site, # Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches, the narrower the niche the better

Let the popular content be paid for by advertising, and the niche, exclusive content can be sold to fewer people at a higher price.

He articulated something that is now increasingly becoming obvious: As products go digital, their marginal cost goes to zero.

The Times' online readership dropped 90% after paywall went up; paying readers estimated to generate £1.4MM annually http://bit.ly/bCDTeD – Alison Loat (AlisonLoat) http://twitter.com/AlisonLoat/statuses/19102191076

he Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show. Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now "bounced" to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories (created at the Guardian) that have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have fallen to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.

thetimes.co.uk

RT @Mettout: Le nez dans le paywall, les internautes du Times ont déserté: 90% de trafic en moins depuis que le site est payant http://b ...

RT @nickhalstead: Times loses almost 90% of online readership | Media | guardian.co.uk http://bit.ly/cYPWio < #toldyouso #fail