Free Free Free

Two news items caught my attention yesterday. One, the New York Times made its online content completely free (parts of it were accessible only to paid subscribers till now) and separately, I read that Rupert Murdoch may consider making WSJ online free.

I found this interesting because both these sites (especially WSJ) were generally regarded good examples of generating revenues through subscriptions. Hence this puts into question the business model that was held by many as a beacon of hope for mainline media in the new space – a model that ensured they lived in this online world after their imminent collapse in the offline one. There are I think three main reasons why this model doesn’t work – and irrespective of how well it is couched, the fact is these newspapers are going free because not enough people are paying up.

1. People consume online media by verticals. Unlike offline newspapers or magazines, people don’t read all or even most sections of online newspapers or magazines. They tend to skim and read only those verticals or sections which are of interest to them. It’s difficult to get a consumer to pay for the entire newspaper portal if he / she is going to read only the sports section or the technology section – and they’d rather read that stuff on sites dedicated to those subjects.

2. Most of the traffic to such sites is actually generated by links provided through search engines. And somebody who is directed to a site through such links is unlikely to subscribe just to read a single article of interest at that point in time.

3. A lot of bloggers refrain from linking ‘subscriber access only’ sites. This further reduces the number of possible visits to the sites.

As difficult as it may be for old media owners to reconcile to giving content for free, that’s probably the only way for them to remain relevant in today’s information-rich era. Meanwhile, they’ll just have to keep trying to discover more ways to monetize their content, other than advertising.