WSJ.com Will Go Free, Eventually

Congratulations to wsj.com for posting impressive growth in both page views and unique visitors over the past year. Don't pay too much attention to the numbers quoted: they're "based on the company's internal traffic numbers," and therefore not much use in apples-to-apples comparisons. But the rate of change is probably reasonably reliable, and it's high.

Does this mean that Rupert Murdoch was right not to make the website free? No, it doesn't. And in fact I'm still convinced that the site will end up going completely free, if not sooner then later.

If you look at the Mediaweek story, there's one statistic conspicuous by its absence: what has happened to the number of subscribers to wsj.com over the past year. Betcha it hasn't grown at all, and that substantially all of wsj.com's new uniques are there for the free content only. (That would help explain why page views are growing much more slowly than uniques are.)

One can assume, then, the subscription revenue stream from wsj.com is stagnant, even as the advertising revenue stream is rising. And clearly if the site went free, then the number of page views per unique visitor would rise, which would mean a substantial increase in advertising inventory even if the number of unique visitors didn't increase much at all. Keeping a large amount of content behind a subscription firewall only serves to alienate non-subscribers and minimize the degree to which wsj.com's new uniques can be monetized.

Still, I no longer expect wsj.com to go free in the near future. As the US moves into a recession, a reliable income stream like that from subscriptions is going to be much more valuable than a volatile one like that from advertising - especially when most of the advertising on wsj.com comes from financial-services companies who are mostly struggling themselves, and always looking for areas where they can cut costs.

In the longer term, however, it just doesn't make sense to reserve a majority of your content for a minority of your readers. The publishing industry is all about building lasting relationships with readers, and you don't do that by putting walls in their faces. The wall will come down: it's only a question of when, not if.

Comments

[mags]

I hope your are right about the WSJ going free. I live in a small town, so paying almost $100 for a subscription to receive it a day late is not worth it at all. And I am definitely not paying $10 less for just the online version either when I can read basically the same news for free elswhere.

[thoroughbred]

I subscribe to the print edition and it galls me to no end that I have to pay extra to read the online content, if anything it should be included in the price of the print subscription OR sold as an online subscription seperately

[Dr. UGA]

I teach emerging new media at the University of Georgia and a few years ago stood in amazement as few newspaper sites included video on their websites. The number of papers doing that now is increasing dramatically. There is no law against a newspaper putting audio and video on their websites. They now much play catch-up.

The Wall Street Journal has an attitude, a very bad one for 2008. It seems to think its content is so much more valuable than all those WSJ wanna-be's. Surely their upscale readers won't mind subscribing.

Wrong. The WSJ can play its dinosaur act until it becomes a footnote in history. The number of readers that the "free" online WSJ would add to its base will more than offset losses in subscriptions, probably by a large number. I'll bet the NY Times and many other papers are delighted that the WSJ is still requiring subscriptions.

As a professor, I like that the Wall Street Journal requires subscriptions because it's easier to understand failure than it is to understand success. It's a wonderful example to my students to see how "old meda" that fail to adapt lose their credibility and miss opportunities like WSJ-TV and WSJ-radio delivered to anyone's desktop.

Finally, my guess is that it's the pre-retirement crowd that are reading the paper. People under 60 know where to get excellent business news elsewhere, and those sites will cite the WSJ if anything big does come up in the "paper."

You should not drive into the future by focusing your eyes on the rear view mirror rather than the horizon in front of you.

Oh, by the way, I'd be reading the WSJ if it were free (we accept the bargain of putting up with those 10 second Flash video ads before going to the paper). I suspect I represent the silent majority.