All Posts Tagged With: "paid content"

Frankly, I’m surprised that it’s The Times and the Sunday Times that have initiated the closest to what I’ve advocated in the past in terms of a smart, voluntary news premium membership model online. If you haven’t seen it, check out Times+.

Why my surprise? Well, if you’ve followed recent coverage of Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns the Times, you’d think that Sir Rupert is dead set on charging for all sorts of content online from his newspapers and new properties, and is “going to war with the Internet.” … That link is to Michael Wolff’s Vanity Fair profile on Murdoch for the November 2009 issue.

But read Wolff’s piece and then look at the Times+ strategy and you have to wonder what Murdoch is really thinking. (Or if his underlings are simply ignoring his Luddite tendencies; or if it’s all some grand plan meant to mislead competitors, analysts, and pundits.)

Times+ works like this:

• Subscribers to the print edition get a Times+ online membership as part of their subscription.
• Non-print-subscribers can pay £50 a year for a Times+ membership.

The tagline or slogan from the folks marketing Times+ is “events + offers + extras.” What you get:

“If you’re a member of Times+, you’re a member of The Times and The Sunday Times, and can look forward to invitations to exclusive events — free film screenings, private views and expert talks — plus upgrades, money-saving offers, gifts and much more.”

At least at this time, the news content of The Times/Sunday Times’ main website is free. Times+ is meant to entice online readers to cough up the £50 a year fee, and give a digital goodie to those willing to still read The Times on newsprint. Not interested in Times+ marvelous offers? You can still read the Times’ content free on the web. (I hope Murdoch doesn’t change that; Times+ as currently implemented is smart.)

With a nod to the news-industry discussion about how premium content online can get people to pay, Times+ members get access to either Culture+ or Travel+ (but not both), which otherwise each cost £25 a year. (My guess: The Times won’t sell many £25 online subscriptions to either site, as most interested readers will simply look elsewhere on the web for similar free coverage.)

What makes this smart, in my view, is that a big part of the appeal of Times+ is the offers of discounts and offers from sponsors and advertisers, plus the free member events. In fact, when you view the homepage of Times+, note that the special offers are highlighted above the editorial content, and presented in the same style. The message is clear: Subscribe to Times+ and you’ll be getting your money’s worth.

When I’ve heard others in the newspaper industry talk about the membership model, the tendency is to focus on news extras. Which is fine, but I don’t think news extras alone will grow a newspaper online membership to anything resembling success. Offering some really good commercial offers has real potential, though.

I’d like to see Times+ step up the marketing a bit, though, to make becoming a paying Times+ member a “no-brainer.” It’s not that yet. But a simple tweak of the marketing should do it. “For your £50 a year membership, you get £500 in discounts and offers, including 2-for-1 meals at some of London’s finest restaurants.” Or something like that.

So, bravo, The Times/Sunday Times! Please don’t let your Australian boss screw this up.

Earlier this week, Jeff Reifman of Newscloud wrote an essay, “How Micro-payments Could Save Journalism,” which he says was inspired by most recent Editor & Publisher column, “Your News Content Is Worth Zero to Digital Consumers.” (I’m a bit slow to respond due to a busy work week.)

Reifman wrote: “I disagree with the premise of Steve Outing’s column last week. … I think consumers will pay for news content and that an aggregated micro-payment system has a place in solving the sustainability challenge facing journalism.”

In general, Reifman and I simply disagree, and you can read both articles yourself if you’d like to compare and contrast our views. (You’ll discover that both of us wrote headlines that overstate and exaggerate our positions!)

Rather than a point-by-point rebuttal of Reifman’s article (and I do find some good ideas in his writing), I want to suggest an alternative to one idea he pitched: turning on a counter or meter so that a website or blog reader sees how often he/she has used your site. He wrote:

“Place widgets on each page that show readers quantitatively how many stories they’ve read and how much time they’ve been spending on your site. … Set a threshold at which you expect readers to start paying.”

Now, I see that as essentially a negative approach. Let’s determine who our best customers are, then “punish” them by demanding that they start paying small amounts.

Here’s what I’d rather see. I like the idea of telling a reader how much they’ve used your website. If their personal counter widget clearly shows that they put a lot of time into viewing content on your site, then that’s a social cue to “do the right thing” and voluntarily donate some money to support it. (The donation mechanism must be fast and super easy.)

But just as Reifman admits that micro-payments alone won’t solve the news industry’s problems, neither will a donation strategy alone.

So let’s go one step further, and turn Reifman’s negative approach into a positive one! Instead of the counter or meter punishing a web user for over-using your website, reward that frequent user! Turn the personal counter into a tool to encourage more visits. (Most newspaper websites, in particular, have a problem with low average visits-per-month by users.)

This can be as simple and low-cost as making it a game. The “reward” for being in the top 10 users of a site in any month might be nothing more than being highlighted as one of the site’s biggest fans. (Run a photo of your site’s most frequent visitor each week.) Better would be some tangible reward, in the same sort of way that airline affinity programs reward you with points to be accrued and used to get free plane tickets. Reward points to individual users for visiting your site often; they might “spend” the points accrued over multiple visits on accessing the limited amount of premium content on your site rather than having to pay real money.

Or reward frequent visitors with real prizes: The most-frequent site users could win free-meal restaurant coupons or ski lift tickets from advertisers. The top 10 visitors could be entered into a drawing for a weekly prize supplied by an advertiser. I’m sure you can think of many more variations.

Will my approach save the news industry? No, of course not. But I think that Reifman’s micro-payment strategy will bring in little revenue, and turn off lots of online users of your site because of the negative nature of the strategy. By taking the positive approach, news sites can actually encourage more intentional repeat visits. User behavior is clearly trending toward people finding news on your website via other referral sources, rather than purposefully visiting your specific site. A positive “reward” strategy at least has the potential to encourage more loyalty and repeat visits.

None of this solves the news industry’s crisis. I think my positive spin on user usage-feedback could be one little piece of the puzzle. I put more faith in strategies like membership programs, charging for unique niche content (i.e., low pay-walls), network donation solutions (which I’ve written lots about in recent months), and improvements in online advertising. (In fact, I’m feeling more bullish about online advertising for news websites — for the first time in a long time — after learning about some developments that could be game-changing for media companies. Since I typically respect embargo requests from companies, I won’t be writing on that topic until a bit later on.)

SaveTheNews.org’s first big public meeting of journalists and community members (September 16) — strategically planned for the U.S. city at ground zero for the “News Crisis,” Denver — was clearly a success in sounding the alarm about the decline of serious public-interest journalism. Six months ago, the city lost one of its two major daily newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News, and other newspapers and traditional media outlets in metro Denver and around the state have suffered severe cuts. The result: important stories not told, an environment ripe for abuse by less-closely monitored public officials and business leaders, and a less-informed citizenry.

The SaveTheNews event attracted a capacity crowd of about 200 people who filled the bottom floor of the Colorado History Museum just south of the State Capitol Building. While the abundance of laid-off journalists in the room (many once employed by the Rocky) were looking for answers to the question of how to fund public-interest reporting — and thus continue making a livelihood from doing journalism — the room also included a large contingent of community members alarmed by the Rocky’s demise and wondering where (and if) they will get news about the most important things going on in their hometown in the future, if things keep getting worse.

The event included 14 small-table discussions on a variety of sub-topics, which preceded a general panel discussion featuring former Rocky Mountain News editor and publisher John Temple and other local luminaries. At the discussion tables, facilitators (including me) warmed up the attendees with intense exchanges about how to tackle the various facets of the problem. It was our job to ask questions and listen, not to lecture on what we know or believe.

I was assigned as the facilitator of the “Commercial News Models: Where will we get our news?” table, and interest in that topic outnumbered the chairs available. Our standing-room-only group was animated and opinionated, and not of one mind when it came to solutions. And even though the journalists around the table outnumbered the non-journalists, the community members, I think, gave we journalists some hope that the issue of sustainability of public-interest news reporting is beginning to resonate outside of the media cognoscenti and news-industry working stiffs.

Continued

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?

The American Press Institute’s invitation-only “Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference” this morning included a presentation by Greg Harmon of Belden Interactive and Greg Swanson of ITZ Publishering, showing the results of a survey of 2,400 U.S. newspaper executives. (You can see the full 80-slide presentation here.)

I find much evidence that newspaper leaders remain delusional about how charging for online content (some or all) is going to become such a big revenue stream that it will save them. Below is the slide that just screamed out at me the main problem: Newspaper executives are out of touch with the online audience to a huge degree.

Click the image below to see an enlarged view.

For the benefit of anyone not able to see the chart in an RSS feed or mobile version of this blog, the graphic shows that 75% of newspaper execs believe that if their content were no longer available on their website, online users would foremost turn to the print edition of the newspaper. Meanwhile, only 30% of online news users said they would turn to the print edition in such a case; the No. 1 choice (at 68% of respondents to a 2009 Belden survey) was to look to “other local media Internet sites.”

Wow. That pretty much says it all. Many newspapers are doomed without management change at the top, moving people into the executive suite who have a better grasp of reality. Or the people already occupying those offices need to get new glasses.

Disclaimer: I think Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly is a big-mouth wingnut who spouts dangerous ideas. (Yes, Glenn Beck is worse.) I never thought I’d compliment O’Reilly, but I’ve been pondering voluntary membership models for news websites lately, and I like what O’Reilly and his team have created with the BillOreilly.com Premium Membership. Overlook the arrogance and there’s an online business model there.

O’Reilly’s website for his The Factor show is, of course, mostly free. But if you’re an O’Reilly fan and want more of Bill than you can see on TV or his free site, then there’s more to be had, for a price: $49.95 a year (auto renews on your credit card!) or $4.95 a month.

This is exactly the model that many newspaper and magazine publishers have been talking about lately, though many are having trouble figuring out what they’ve got that they can charge for.

Bill’s got it figured out. Premium members get such “goodies” as:

• Bill’s exclusive critique of the night’s show, recorded by him immediately after the show ends.
• Exclusive video clips.
• Access to audio archives of The Radio Factor show.
• Weekly backstage live chat with Bill exclusively for Premium members to ask him questions.
• Access to exclusive photo albums of Bill with celebrities and doing his thing.
• Priority e-mail. Your message to Bill will not get tossed in with all the other e-mail he gets, and Premium members are promised “priority treatment and a guaranteed review.”

In all there are 16 benefits to being an O’Reilly Premium Member. Some are comical, like the “Rate The Factor With Viewer Voting.” I doubt his loyal fans who are paying members give him much flak. The Bill O’Reilly screensaver Premium offer with the great one in front of a bunch of American flags likewise made me laugh. (Unlike Stephen Colbert, O’Reilly’s not doing this stuff as satire.)

The O’Reilly Premium Membership isn’t especially innovative, in that some Hollywood stars, other celebrities (and especially porn stars), and athletes do the same sort of thing. E.g., Miley Cyrus‘ special fan site will cost you $29.95 a year or $2.95 a month.

But you don’t see much of these paid online fan clubs or premium website memberships for news people. Journalists are too serious, and this just proves that Bill O’Reilly is an entertainer, not a newsman, right?

Actually, as the news industry ponders news membership models, creating Premium memberships that get you more from a favorite star journalist and access to the person could be worth paying for. As I reported here a few days ago, Men’s Health magazine turned its Jimmy the Bartender advice feature into a paid iPhone app; that’s sort of a premium membership, albeit a cheap one at $2.99 to buy the app and no recurring fees. Other magazines may be able to turn their star columnists into Premium memberships.

Even for newspapers I think this has potential. Consider a paid Premium membership for New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman for, say, $20 a year; or a Financial Times niche columnist Premium membership for $100 or more a year. Friedman might offer extra content like full video or audio interviews of the world leaders he interviews, and exclusive webcasts or live chats restricted to paying Premium members. The FT columnist, because of his focus on an arcane slice of the business world, can offer Premum members additional inside-baseball information and stats that business people will pay for. Ergo, a financial niche columnist might be worth more with the Premium Membership model than a rock-star columnist like Friedman, who covers more generic news topics.

This could even filter down to the local level. Could a newspaper reporter who covers city council and city politics have a Premium Membership that offered paying members extra insider info and reporting, in the way that inside-politics newsletter editors of decades past charged political junkies and people affected by local politics for their in-depth knowledge and digging?

It’s worth exploring. My gut reaction is that individual premium memberships might be an easier sell than a similar membership for an entire news brand. Or follow the cable model and offer basic news-site memberships, but charge a la carte additional fees for valuable columnist or specialty-reporter member benefits.

Who’s up for experimenting with this? Who’s already doing this? Is Bill O’Reilly (I find it hard to fathom) onto something important?

Something I’ve been tracking for months now is the wave of new solutions for getting people to pay for online content, either through voluntary donations or mandatory payments. Some are in beta now; others due in the coming months.

Currently, I have a Payyattention donation box at the end of my blog items, and I’ve been playing with early versions of SprinklePenny and BeneVote (though they’ve been removed temporarily due to some bugginess). I’m anxiously awaiting putting a Kachingle medallion on this blog to be part of that voluntary payment network, and will certainly try out others as they go live.

And, of course, there are plenty of options for paying for content where money is a requirement, not a request: Paypal, credit cards, and upcoming solutions such as those from Journalism Online. (The latter also says it will offer donation options as well as various means for required payments and subscriptions.)

As author of this blog, I’d love to have lots of options for readers to send a few cents (or dollars!) my way if they like my writing or find value in it. But this blog could easily get overwhelmed with donation graphics from all the different services!

I’ve been looking for the solution, which is an obvious one: a ShareThis-like widget that aggregates all the solutions for payment and/or donation. The first such solution appears to be PayCheckr.

The concept here should be pretty obvious from the screen shots above. How I might use it to collect contributions on my blog is to have a PayCheckr icon or (ideally) something that says, “Please support this blog,” with a mouseover action expanding to what you see in the top image above — but in my case it would be populated with voluntary donation options — and place it at the end of my blog entries.

For paid content, a site or blog might use PayCheckr to aggregate all the forced-pay options that an online user could use to pay for content access.

You could also get creative. Perhaps you let Kachingle paying network members get access to a special piece of content or area of your site, but non-Kachinglers would have to choose another option, such as paying for a subscription or via a micropayment service.

Also, PayCheckr might aggregate all or most of the options; you still might choose to highlight some options outside of the PayCheckr widget.

Anyway, I’ve been looking for someone to come up with something like this, and PayCheckr founder Allan Hoving appears to be the first. Somehow he evaded my radar, since minOnline gave the fledgling service a write-up in late July.

Here’s the CoverItLive archived version of today’s ASNE online chat about new news business models. The event was hosted by Steve Buttry, with panelists Mark Briggs, Charlotte Anne Lucas, Dan Conover, and me. Did we solve the news industry’s problems? (Umm, I doubt it. But some good ideas were tossed around.)

(I’m not sure if I’m a big fan of this format of group discussion. Like chatting on IM or Skype, sometimes by the time you’ve typed an answer to a question, someone else has already published another question or changed the topic. So read this chat transcript with that in mind; there’s the occasional out-of-order conversation that doesn’t happen with live in-person or phone group discussions.)

My time to speak at the Aspen Institute’s FOCAS conference, running through Wednesday, got squished, so I had to skip slides and make other adjustments (ugh). The talk was on “Paying for Digital News: The Future or Folly.”

A bunch of folks asked that I posted the presentation slides, so here they are in PDF form:

Paying for Digital News presentation

(In case your wondering why discussion of Journalism Online is left out, that’s because JO co-founder Gordon Crovitz gave a presentation right before me.)

Whether traditional news publishers believe that user/reader donations represent a viable revenue stream or not, entrepreneurs are hot on the idea, judging by the number of variations of solutions under development for getting people to voluntarily give money to support websites and blogs. I’ve begun using this, my personal blog, to try out the early versions of some of these upcoming and new services.

The latest to add to my list is SprinklePenny, a UK company that’s developed a service that is, frankly, very close to the model of Kachingle (which I’ve profiled previously).

The idea is that a user wishing to support free content made available by a variety of news sites, blogs, and other websites signs up for a $5/month (or a higher amount, if desired) SprinklePenny account, which is auto-billed to a credit card each month. Then whenever said SprinklePenny member visits a site that participates in the network (like this blog), the visit is counted and the $5 is split up at the end of each month depending on how often the member visited various SprinklePenny-enabled sites.

The primary difference between it and Kachingle is subtle, but perhaps important. Kachingle asks that Kachingle paying members click on a “medallion” when they see one on a site they like and wish to financially support. SprinklePenny credits every enabled site with a visit credit, and thus every site that a member visits receives some money from SprinklePenny members who drop by. But if you don’t want to support a site that you visited, you can remove it from the list of sites that receive some of your money.

In other words, Kachingle asks you to “opt-in” to financially supporting a site. SprinklePenny has you by default financially supporting every enabled site you visit, but you can “opt-out” for any visited site that you really don’t want to support.

It will be interesting to see which of these does better than the other. I suspect it will depend on the marketing plan of each company; the one that gets in front of the largest audience of potential members likely will be the winner.

I do see a potential problem with the SprinklePenny approach: Say, I am duped into visiting a site that I find offensive (perhaps by a Twitter recommendation) and it’s a SprinklePenny publisher; then I’ll have to actively turn off my support for that site.

With Kachingle, I’m in control of which sites I financially support; I have to click the Kachingle medallion to support a site. While I like that better, it’s an extra step that I don’t have to take if I’m supporting free content with SprinklePenny. So will I remember to click those medallions are thus start sending my favorite sites money?

Both companies will tell you their approach is the best one. We’ll see in time.