Bulldog Reporter - Daily Dog | Previous Stories | Is Pay-Per-Click the New Free? More Newspapers Shifting to Paid Web Models

When the Financial Times started charging readers for access to its website in 2002, the move was considered "freakish," said the paper's chief executive in a recent interview with the New York Times. And now, with visionaries like Wired's Chris Anderson still recruiting parishioners in hordes to the Church of Free, charging for content on the web is blasphemous. But that may all be changing—and fast. A number of other publishers are now joining the Financial Times in undertaking paid-content strategies. "It was pretty lonely out there for a while in paid land," quipped John Ridding, chief executive of the Financial Times, in an interview with the New York Times last week. "But it has become pretty clear that advertising alone is not going to sustain online business models. Quality journalism has to be paid for."

News Corps chief executive Rupert Murdoch said this month that the company intended to charge for all its news websites. That plan would have the company's major newspapers in the United States, Britain and Australia joining their sister newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, which already charges for access to most of its site.
Even executives of The New York Times have said they are re-considering ways to get readers to pay for online access. In 2007, the Times website abandoned a pay wall for some content, concluding that it was restricting the potential for online advertising, despite the site's having attracted 227,000 paying customers, the paper reported.
While it's still too early to call, the next big web battle cry you hear may be "pay," not "free." And it might just "pay" off: Ridding told the New York Times that revenue for subscriptions to FT.com have risen 30 percent.
Skeptics claim that while readers are willing to shell out dough for specialized financial news, they won't pay for general news. Ridding disagrees: "I sometimes think there's too much fatalism around—people throwing up their hands and saying it's not possible for general publishers to charge," Mr. Ridding said in an interview with the New York Times. "I think it is possible, and necessary, for them to charge."

via bulldogreporter.com

News and content portals considering a pay to read model might be good for specialized content access, as in training, ed and closed portals. This might not only damage their total reach but decrease the value within their advertising space because of less viewer exposure. So, are advertisers willing to pay for less impressions to a smaller audience and what increase in paid subscribers is necessary to make up for the loss in ad revenue.

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