Mobile

* at least on the smartphone platform

ConsumerReports.org is the classic example of a once-primarily print publisher having content valuable and unique enough that it can charge for it online. The site for years has had a subscription model, with a monthly or annual fee to access its product reviews.

I subscribed for a while, but I rarely needed to look for product reviews; I got tired of paying for a service that went unused most months and canceled. (The rate has changed since then: It’s now $26 a year, or $5.95 a month, auto-renewing.)

I’ve long been annoyed by ConsumerReports.org because it only offered subscriptions — no day passes or even a pass for a single month’s access without automatically dinging your credit card every month.

While CR’s regular website is still crippled in that way, the company’s new mobile website for smartphones finally offers a day pass for 99 cents, or a non-renewing month pass for $4.99. Hurray!

Hurray! CR finally offers better payment options

You have to wonder what took CR so long. Having CR reviews in your hand while out shopping for a new dryer is a handy thing, and I’d gladly pay for a daily or month pass during periods when I’m shopping for a major purchase.

So, CR, how about doing the same with your non-mobile website now? You can start getting customers like me — who refused to pay for a long-terms subscription — back. (Many years ago, I even subscribed to the print magazine.)

From a business perspective, I can understand why the one-off pricing for reviews or the day pass might seem to be an option to be avoided. Get enough people hooked into having their credit card charged automatically each month and that’s a sweet business model.

But the days when that was possible are gone, in my view. Too many websites and online services want to charge a monthly fee. Sorry, CR, but there are only so many monthly online fees I’m willing to pay.

I’ll use CR’s mobile website with the day pass option when I’m in a position to need the product reviews. I’ll avoid the regular website until it dumps the subscription-only silliness.

I’ve had an iPad for a couple weeks now (sharing with my wife and two daughters; it’s a popular gadget around our house). And I’m starting to notice some patterns in buying apps for the new tablet. I’d love to know if any of you share my behavior. (Comment below, please.)

1. I don’t think much before purchasing a low-priced iPad app that is “permanent.” For instance, the Weather HD app looked cool, and even with its limited functionality (compared to the free Weather Channel Max for iPad app), I enjoy the quick look at the current weather and brief forecasts for the next few days and the app’s slick animated photo graphics. 99 cents? Sure, why not.
2. Family members and I have purchased a few more expensive iPad apps: Scrabble ($9.99); Crosswords ($9.99); Pages ($9.99); Starwalk ($4.99, and highly recommended!); and some more low-priced ones: Magic Piano (99 cents); Glee ($2.99); Set ($2.99). Again, each of those apps is “permanent,” as in they will stay on the iPad until we tire of them.

Buy a digital edition of Time magazine on your iPad! … For $4.99?

I’ve also downloaded a bunch of news apps, all of them free. Frankly, the news publishers that are giving away these apps are leaving money on the table. Of the apps that I downloaded for free to my iPad, I wouldn’t have blinked at paying 99 cents or $1.99 for those from: New York Times, NPR, USA Today, BBC News. I would pay for these because they are permanent.

Indeed, to not charge for the apps seems, well, crazy. If an iPad reader of any of those news brands doesn’t want to pay a couple bucks for their apps, then all he/she has to do is launch the iPad’s Safari browser and go to their websites, paying nothing. You can even bookmark, say, the NYTimes.com homepage and put an icon on the iPad screen permanently. The reason that someone like me would pay for an iPad news app from a specific news provider is if the experience is superior to viewing the news website on the iPad’s browser.

(At this early stage of iPad news apps, the websites as viewed on the iPad browser sometimes are as good of a or a better viewing experience than viewing the iPad app versions. NYTimes.com viewed on the iPad’s browser is quite nice, for example; in fact, it’s better than the only iPad app available from the New York Times currently, NYT Editors’ Choice.)

Within the news iPad apps I’ve used so far — and I’ll concede that it’s early, and publishers I hope will figure this out soon — the business model seems to be something that the companies will get to later. USA Today’s iPad app, for instance, has a banner ad on the homepage (Marriott Hotels at this writing), but ads don’t show up in much else. The NY Times iPhone app has ads from a single advertiser, at the bottom of the homepage (where banner blindness will make them mostly ineffective due to that positioning), and on the second screens of most news articles.

These apps are mostly “shovelware” from the news websites, and lack even web basics such as allowing user comments.

One nice ad technique used on the NY Times iPad app is an occasional “interstitial” full-page ad, which appears after you click a homepage or section-front headline and appears before you get to view your article. I don’t find this that annoying, but if I did, the Times would be smart to give me an option in the app to turn off such take-over-my-screen ads by clicking a setting and, say, paying a dollar to avoid seeing them for the next month,or maybe $5 to not see them for a year.

There are lots of ideas for “upsells” within an iPad news app to persuade (not demand!) people to pay extra beyond the initial, inexpensive download fee. Let’s say that USA Today’s iPad app had a setting where for $1 a month I could turn on a commenting feature and be allowed to leave comments on stories. This should be the topic of another blog post about how to make money from upsells in news iPad apps, so I’ll leave that for another time.

While major news brands are not taking advantage of obvious revenue opportunities with iPad apps yet, Time magazine, until this week, has been going about it wrong. Initially, an iPad user could purchase a single issue of a Time weekly edition, an enhanced digital edition of the print magazine, for $4.99 per edition. That’s compared to the street price of a printed Time magazine at $4.95.

It’s not just that the iPad single-edition price is a few cents more than the paper edition (which I think is ill-advised, considering the printing and physical distribution costs saved by Time with digital editions), but it’s also absurd that Time was selling each edition as a separate iPad app.

Getting back to my earlier comments, there’s no way that I’m going to pay for individual magazines as individual iPad apps! This approach completely misunderstands the device. First, the single-edition iPad purchase is fleeting; psychologically, I resist buying iPad apps that are read or viewed once and then deleted (since if I don’t and I continue buying iPad Time editions, my iPad screen will fill up with Time icons for various editions).

Time has now fixed this blunder and offers a Time iPad app for free. From within the app, the iPad user can purchase digital versions of the magazine for $4.99. Old issues are stored in the cloud for later reading, and there’s only one Time icon on the iPad screen. But pricing should be more realistic, I believe, and subscriptions offered. While I don’t think that this is the best iPad business model for Time, at least if its executives want to charge per digital issue, they should get a grasp on what’s likely to fly in digital-content pricing when there’s free content (like Time.com!) available on the iPad browser.

Count me as an iPad fan. I love the device, and more specifically I love the form factor of a tablet and can see it becoming an important part of my media life, taking much time away from my laptop. It does concern me that news publishers, out of the gate, appear to be missing the boat in working on an innovative business model for the tablet. Geez, I hope we’re not seeing the big news brands repeat the mistakes of their past when it came to adapting to new digital devices!

Recently, I’ve been noticing new iPhone apps coming to market that are adopting interesting business models. Generally, they can be categorized as using the “freemium” (or semi-freemium) model; i.e., they give away some valuable content and entice you to upgrade for more and better features.

1. This American Life iPhone app. … This app costs $2.99 to purchase, and what that gets you is well worth that small amount of money if you’re a fan of the public radio show (as I am):

• All of the This American Life radio broadcasts from the most current to the program’s beginning in 1995, which are streamed to your phone. (In other words, you need to be in range of a cell-phone tower or wi-fi network.)
• Easy search for old programs, including by contributor (e.g., David Sedaris, John Hodgman, et al).

The premium part of the model is if you would like to “own” any episode. You can download any program to your iPhone or iTouch (via Apple’s iTunes) for 99 cents, which you might want to do for a favorite episode to keep, or if you want to listen to several episodes on a car trip where you’re not likely to experience quality (or any) streaming.

This app is a great example of selling an app for a modest one-time fee, but also having a recurring revenue stream from the app. In this case, This American Life can make money from it’s 15-year archives with no work involved other than promoting the app to iPhone/iTouch owners.

2. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2010 iPhone app. I only downloaded this app to my phone to look at the business model, not the female models. Swimsuit 2010 is a mobile version of the infamous SI annual Swimsuit issue of the magazine, featuring photos and videos.

This is a full-on freemium app, since it’s free to download to your iPhone/iTouch. That gets you only the basics: single swimsuit photos of several (but not all) SI models, and several 1-minute videos.

SI (and Apple) will get your money if you want more. (No, I did not pay for the upgrade.) For $1.99, paid from within the app, it is upgraded to see multiple photos of all the swimsuit models, and all the videos.

Which model (business, that is) should you choose: Free download with paid upgrade from within the app? Or paid download with much more given away free, but upgrades still sold within the app?

I think it depends on your audience. This American Life is a great radio program with a small but dedicated audience. SI’s controversial annual Swimsuit Issue is a mass-market offering worth $1 billion-plus in revenue for the publisher.

It’s in SI’s interest to get the limited app on as many phones as possible, and hope that lots of them will spring for the $1.99 upgrade. (A few days ago, the Swimsuit app was seeing a 7.8% paid-upgrade success rate.)

For This American Life, its loyal fans are more likely to pay the $2.99 both to show support for the program, and because what you get for that price is pretty darn nice for the show’s fans. (I didn’t hesitate to buy the app when I first saw it promoted.) I’m betting that the show will make more money by asking an up-front fee for the app than if it gave it away free and upsold the content.

For SI, I believe it will make more money giving away the sparse free app and selling upgrades than if it tried to charge an upfront fee for the app.

I’m not sure that we’ll ever know in these two cases, but I’d like to see some research on most-lucrative mobile app charging strategies for content. Indeed, I hope to be doing that at the Digital Media Test Kitchen at CU-Boulder before too long. (Hint, hint… need funding.)

While I’ve mentioned it a time or two on Twitter, I haven’t written much about the Digital Media Test Kitchen, which the University of Colorado School of Journalism & Mass Communication and I are building. Recently, I got the go-ahead to open up the website and blog for the Test Kitchen and start to spread the word.

Please do take a look around and tell me what you think of our mission and early research and development projects.

The simplest way to describe what the Test Kitchen is about is to emphasize how we are bringing together Journalism students and faculty with their colleagues from Computer Science and Business (and likely other disciplines as well in the future, depending on the project), as well as outside partners, to address the problems of journalism and the news sector and invent new solutions.

Our three primary areas of interest are news business models, new techniques for journalism, and new technologies for news.

The first Test Kitchen project is under way, and focuses on how to present in-depth (a.k.a., enterprise and investigative) news on the small screen of a smart-phone. This is a collaboration with I-News, the non-profit Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network. No, we don’t expect many people to read or view an entire investigative reporting package on an iPhone, but we do want to figure out how to make the limited time you spend on your phone reading and interacting with in-depth journalism a good experience.

I see our project team’s mission as helping news providers (old and new) make the right transition to the mobile platform, and not repeating the news industry’s big mistake when it moved from print to web (i.e., a “shovelware” approach to content rather than taking advantage of what the new medium of the web made possible).

I’d love to hear your ideas for future Test Kitchen projects that will move news forward. (Idea submission form.) And I’d like to hear from media and technology companies about possible collaboration. And, oh yeah, I’d be especially eager to talk with potential additional funders and donors to support the Test Kitchen in combining the ingredients of journalism, business, and technology to create more new recipes for reinventing news for the digital age.

My wife, Suzanne, has long had to put up with a husband who’s a new-gadget hound. I’m an early adopter but not a super-early adopter. We’ve had a TiVo DVR for years, but I wasn’t among the very first to purchase one. I waited for the iPhone 3G to come out before catching iPhone fever. (Suzanne has one, too.) She tends to tag along, patient with me when I enthuse about some new gizmo. (Like the Roku box I bought as a family Christmas present. No one else in the family had a clue what it was supposed to do.) Eventually Suzanne sees the wisdom of (most) of my new-gadget purchases.

Since she’s a school librarian and avid reader, I thought that an e-book reader would be a special holiday gift. So I ordered Suzanne a nook from Barnes & Noble, preferring the virtual screen interface to the Amazon Kindle’s many physical buttons.

In observing her use of the nook in the first couple weeks, I’ve come to predict that the nook (and the Kindle) will not win over huge chunks of the population. While the devices and their E Ink screens make for a wonderful reading experience (my opinion) and are easy on the eyes in a way that reading lengthy prose on a backlit screen is not, they’re still not quite ready for truly mass-market success.

Perhaps Apple will debut the Kindle- and nook-killer later this month. I’m looking forward to seeing what Steve Jobs is hiding from public view.

Anyway, here’s a quick run-down of Suzanne’s first couple weeks with the nook (as observed by me):

• Initial enthusiasm and “that’s so cool” reaction
• Love for some features like tap on a word to get a definition; add notes to sections as you’re reading; highlighting key passages; etc.
• Some disillusionment: “You mean you can’t read it in bed in the dark? You have to have a light on to see the screen?”
• After she played around with it a bit, the nook went in a bedside drawer, not seeing much use

The final point needs some explanation, because it’s not a rejection of the product. Rather, Suzanne has a pile of books on her reading and book-club list, waiting to be picked up. What’s the point of spending an extra $10 for a nook e-version? Books on nook will have to come later, when the paid-for or from-the-library printed versions have been read.

One book on her to-read list is already in hand in digital form, purchased from Amazon for reading on her iPhone. She was disappointed that that purchase couldn’t simply be ported to her nook.

More alarming (to me) was an e-mail receipt showing up in my inbox from Amazon.com, showing that Suzanne had ordered a printed book after receiving the nook. It turns out that it was a cookbook, with color photos, and that didn’t seem like the right kind of book to order in digital form for an e-reader than only displays black, grays, and white.

Magazines and newspapers? Nope, she told me; won’t use the nook for that, especially since the monthly subscription prices per publication are ridiculously high, and she can read most of them on the web for free.

I’ll continue to spy on my wife’s nook usage (or lack thereof), and I suspect that I’ll see her make the transition to digital books read on the nook, in time.

Suzanne was, I guessed, the ideal nook/Kindle convert: librarian, book lover, and not a techno-phobe. Alas, it was not love at first sight.

This makes me think that we’re not quite there yet. What will become a mass-market hit, I believe, will be a thin tablet computer that does everything an iPhone with a big color screen could do (i.e., a full-fledged wirelessly connected computer), and is an outstanding form factor for reading books.

The trick will be getting the price down to a few hundred dollars, and that may take a while.

The ultimate tablet, I think, would be that large, thin iPhone/iTouch device with a stunning color, backlit touch-screen. And it would have a switch to turn the screen into a paper-like E Ink experience with no backlight, for comfortable book and other long-form reading.

Alas, unless Mr. Jobs has some magic up his sleeve, that may be a pipe dream.

Strike those last two paragraphs in my original of this blog item. It seems that a single screen that can be both back-lit color and E-Ink quality reflective display for reading in light is possible; indeed, it exists. Pixel Qi showed off such technology at the Consumer Electronics Show last week. Here’s a Gizmodo report on this amazing development.

And then there’s Mirasol displays, which could be the technology that moves media tablets where they need to go. Exciting stuff!

Today I received an e-mail promotion from an electronics e-retailer that I’d purchased from before. The after-holidays sales promotion looked interesting, so I clicked the ad to go to the site. I spent very little time there, didn’t see any deals I couldn’t live without, and clicked away.

About an hour later, in comes another e-mail from this company, this one with a note, “Thanks for visiting our site!”, and an e-mail coupon for a free $100 dining-out card if I make a purchase of at least $200.

This isn’t a new technique among digital-savvy retailers, but it’s the first one like this that I recall receiving.

Have any news websites tried this approach? (I’ve yet to see it.) It’s a great idea.

For example, tie automated e-mail promotions to when a (known) visitor views a car-review page. Build in some intelligence: If the site visitor reads a review about pick-up trucks or high-mileage hybrids, send a discount offer from a (client) local dealer, or maybe eBay Motors, specific to trucks or hybrids, respectively. Did the user visit the sports section and read three or more articles? E-mail him a discount coupon from a client sporting goods store.

This is a simple, potentially effective technique. But of course you need to know who your visitor is. That’s simple enough if you require your users to register on your site, or you know who they are because they log into your site via Facebook Connect or some other third-party connection.

And you need their permission, which you can get during the registration process (if your site has one), or by asking for permission to send them discounts in the future if they click their assent in a pop-up box.

Yet another possibility is if your news site has a premium membership program (a la Times+). Make receiving these targeted, contextual discount offers a benefit for being a paying news-website member. Of course, members don’t have to receive them and can decide for themselves whether it’s a useful benefit or feels more like annoying spam.

Finally, think beyond e-mail, of course. At sign-up for this service, offer options: Receive the discount offers via mobile phone, Facebook mail, Twitter DM (direct message), e-mail, etc.

If any news organizations have tried this, and I’m just not aware of it, please let me know in the comments area below — and tell us how it’s worked out.

The Guardian has introduced a new iPhone app, and its model is one I’ve endorsed in the past:

• iPhone app provides a much better experience than the mobile website
• Mobile version of Guardian website remains free
• iPhone app costs to download ($3.99 US, £2.39 UK)
• iPhone app content is free (beyond buying the app), but option is left open for charging for some content and/or services down the road from within the app

I bought the app this morning and I’m impressed, mostly. Best part for me is the ability to personalize the sections I want to see and prioritize them. There’s audio, but no video yet. Photo galleries are nice. Ditto for off-line reading.

I’m perplexed that some newspaper companies that have developed mobile apps still give them away free. Seems like a no-brainer to me to charge a fee to purchase the app, on the grounds of giving the mobile user a better viewing experience than the normal mobile site. As long as a more bare-bones free mobile site is available, consumers can’t really complain if you ask for a few bucks for your app.

As I’ve written in the past, I think it’s psychologically easier to get online users to pay for an app (which they get to keep and use over and over) rather than pay for news (which they can get in many other places online or on their phones for free).

The Guardian starts with the iPhone app (which seems the typical pattern these days), and then will create matching apps for other platforms: Android, RIM, Symbian, and Microsoft.

A new, and very large, Barnes & Noble bookstore opened here in Boulder, Colorado, recently, replacing a smaller store half a block away. I’ve wondered since construction started how the giant bookstore chain could justify a larger store when more and more we’ll be seeing people buying and reading books on digital tablets like Amazon’s Kindle. Wouldn’t smaller bookstores be in our future, not bigger ones?

With the announcement of B&N’s Nook e-reader device to compete with the Kindle, now I understand. The Nook digital strategy supports the brick-and-mortar business — the physical stores — of B&N.

I think the Nook business model is freaking brilliant! Here’s what it looks like:

• The Nook is priced about the same as a Kindle, but advances e-reader technology a bit. It features an E-Ink screen (no color) for reading, but also has a color navigation screen below the reading area.
• It adds a lend-a-book feature; it’s limited, but a great idea — and Amazon is sure to follow with something similar.
• You can preview and buy books anywhere you have a AT&T 3G signal or a wi-fi connection.
• And the best part: B&N says it “soon” will allow Nook owners to take their devices into any B&N physical store and read any e-book for free while in the store using the free wi-fi there!

I’m in awe of whoever thought up that last item. It’s a brilliant strategy to get more people into B&N bookstores. Nook owners will come in to read more than just the samples available to them outside the stores’ wi-fi range. They’ll buy coffee and perhaps other physical merchandise. They’ll read maybe a few chapters into a new book while lounging in a comfy chair in the store, then probably decide to buy the full e-book to finish at home later.

Sure, there might be a few freeloaders who spend time inside the stores reading entire books for free on their Nooks without actually buying the e-books. But so what?! I suspect that the increased coffee shop sales and the number of people who do buy the full e-books will far outweigh the freeloading. And the physical stores will be more crowded, sending the social signal the B&N stores are the place to be.

I had expected bookstores to eventually die off in larger numbers, and for chains like B&N to have fewer stores in the future. But this Nook strategy, as I see it, ensures a bright future for its brick-and-mortar stores. It gives the Nook a big advantage over the Kindle, since Amazon doesn’t have physical stores.

As for independent bookstores, if e-readers like the Nook, Kindle, et al truly take off, I’m not sure how they’ll stay healthy over the long run. But at least they probably have a longer lifespan than printed newspapers; I sense more people willing to say goodbye to the printed newspaper than the comfy printed book.

My latest Editor & Publisher column was posted today. I think you’ll find it provocative.

Your News Content Is Worth Zero to Digital Consumers

Admittedly, the headline overstates things a bit (hey, just trying to get you to pay attention!), but my main point is that whether online or on mobile devices, news publishers need to figure out how to offer something that’s tangible, not ephemeral. Selling fleeting digital news stories is a non-starter. The mobile platform offers some alternative opportunities.

Since EditorandPublisher.com doesn’t support comments on my column posted there, please feel free to engage in a dialog with me and anyone else interested in this topic in the comments area below.

What do you think?

A while back I noted that a new iPhone app from Men’s Health magazine broke some new ground by selling add-on content within the app itself, beyond the initial price ($1.99). Now the magazine is trying again, this time by taking one of its regular features, the “Jimmy the Bartender” advice column, and turning it (him) into an iPhone app.

The Jimmy app costs $2.99, and this is what you get: “Jimmy the Bartender serves up his legendary no-nonsense answers to hundreds of life’s questions, a GPS-enabled guide to his favorite watering holes near you, can’t-lose tips for approaching any woman, cocktail recipes, Eat This: Not That! At the bar, and dozens of other features.”

Frankly, I don’t find Jimmy particularly appealing and wouldn’t pay for this app (disclosure: Men’s Health sent me a free download code so I could review it), but that’s because I don’t hang out in bars or try to approach eligible women. A younger man sans wife and kids might find the content more appealing.

So let’s assume that there is a market of iPhone-toting men who would find the Jimmy app worth 3 bucks for such features as the “Ultimate Wingman,” shown in the image at right. Dial in your social situation or dilemma and Jimmy dispenses some advice on how to approach the desired woman. It doesn’t do much for me, but with the promotional power of Men’s Health magazine’s printed edition, I bet some decent money will be made from guys buying the Jimmy the Bartender app.

If Men’s Health is ahead of the curve on this, it’s in taking a media personality and turning him into a phone app. It makes sense. If I’m a fan of Jimmy’s feature in the magazine, I might be inclined to pay a few bucks for his phone app; whereas, a Men’s Health iPhone app holds less appeal since I can just visit the magazine’s website on my phone’s browser for free.

Other media companies might want to consider creating their own personality mobile apps. For instance, why isn’t there a “Dear Abby” app? A regular newspaper reader whose favorite feature in the paper is Abby probably would buy a Dear Abby phone app, if it was well done and included features such as searching for Abby’s archived answers on a specified topic, and conveniently sending in questions to Abby via the phone. Hey, Abby’s syndicate: How about it?

I think it will take some star-power to sell personality phone apps, but certainly Abby, Dan Savage, Ask Amy, and other media personalities could spin some cash from personal iPhone apps.

I dare say the right individuals could do better in the mobile-apps sales game than the media brands they may write under.

The trend already has shown up with professional athletes. Cincinnati back-up quarterback Jordan Palmer even started an iPhone app development company to create apps for athletes to allow them to better connect with their fans. Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer has a SuperFan iphone app that costs 99 cents. Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong has a new Calorie Tracker iPhone app for $2.99.

OK, media companies, take the hint. Which stars are in your stable worthy of having their own paid mobile apps? And MSNBC, why is Rachel Maddow’s iPhone app free?

(Please include any media personality mobile apps I may have missed in the comments section below.)