Charging for the Web

[yur_moma]

So, is anybody out there charging for the web? If not, are you planning to?

If you are, how has it gone? What are you charging?

Just curious.

[klfcorpcd]

We've been charging since 2005 and in 2008, started charging our print subs an additional .50 cents a month with their print invoice to gain access to our E-edition. It's gone exceptionally well resulting in increase revenue of approximately $150,000 annually from just our print subs additional dollars. With the new ABC rules, and us allowing print subs to opt in/out, it's had a major impact upon the numbers we are going to report as well. To me, it's a win-win situation and our site traffic hasn't been greatly affected either. Of course, we went through another re-design of our site and it has actually improved substantially from previous versions, combined with a lot of marketing efforts, so I'm sure those factors contributed to that aspect.

We only had about 1,000 folks out of our 26,000 on home delivery stay at the home delivery rate and not pay the additional .50 cents more per month. Again, very aggressive marketing campaign touting value of what all you get for your dollar(s) in BOTH products so it made for a smoother transition.

Newspapers that continue to provide free content of information locally are hurting their readership and revenue numbers in my opinion. If you have further questions, just drop me a note. Keith

[circmandjh]

we have decided to cease all mailing of newspapers and offere-subscriptions at full in county home delivery rates.

[scpaperboy]

We began charging February 1, 2010 for access to our web site. Our HD subscribers get free access. It costs $.99 for a one day access, $12.99 for one month, $25 for 3 months and $89 for 1 year. So far our HD is up 120 since 2/1/10, and most imprortantly revenue has sky rocketed. People will PAY to get local news that is not available elsewhere.

Freedom of the Press does not mean Free News.