For years, Web publishers wanted just one thing from you: your “eyeballs.” You didn’t pay cash; you paid attention. Advertisers–and investors–footed the bill. No more. Now, Web publishers want your wallet. And that, believe it or not, is a good thing.
Most Web users think that paying for Web content is most emphatically not a good thing. In fact, a study by Internet analysis firm Jupiter Media Metrix earlier this year indicated that 70 percent of all Internet-using adults “can’t understand why anyone would pay for content.”
Confronted by such sentiment, Web publishers typically say that Web users you, Mr. Web User, and you Ms. Web User, have to be “retrained.” They say that you’ve gotten used to having a free lunch, and that, gradually but inexorably, you’ll have to be reprogrammed to foreswear “free” and embrace “fee.”
So far, most of the retraining has taken the form of avoidance therapy. Read free content online these days, and you’re punished by multiple “pop-up” ad windows and “take-over” ads that literally seize a part of the page. Subscribe to a free email newsletter, and you might find your email address spread ’round the Web. It all works, whether intentionally or not, to sensitize you, to make you see the asterisk next to free*–as in “free, but annoying” or “free, but invasive.”
Today, free* comes with a little pain attached.
Yet if you look closely at what’s on the Web, you might question the idea that Web users need some sort of Maoist re-education. Look closely, and you quickly realize that the fact that 70 percent of Web users can’t imagine paying for Web content isn’t an indictment of paid subscriptions, but so much as an indictment of Web content. Quite simply, most Web users won’t pay for content because most Web content isn’t worth paying for.
Really, it’s not Web users who need retraining; it’s Web publishers. Many still seem stuck in the marketing mindset of the go-go days, looking for the “silver bullet” that will make retrained users snap up the Web’s white elephants. One publisher recently commented that the goal of his subscription program is simply to grab as much money from users as possible while doing the least amount possible in return. That may look promising on a spreadsheet, but real subscribers require more respect.
A little respect goes a long way, too. Experience shows that Web users will pay for online content done well. And not all types of content–even worthy content–can command subscriptions. But quality Web content can, and does, attract paying subscribers.
ConsumerReports.org, the online version of Consumer Reports magazine, has more than 800,000 subscribers who pay $24 a year. The Wall Street Journal claims more than 640,000 subscribers for its online edition, at $59 a year. And Britannica.com boasts 48,000 people paying $50 a year for complete access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica–this despite an earlier ill-conceived effort to give away the encyclopedia for free.
In fact, Britannica is so confident that it recently raised its subscription price to $69.95 a year. Even The New York Times, whose Web site for years has required user registration but remained free of charge, now claims 40,000 subscribers at $19.95 a year for access to New York Times crossword puzzles.
These are significant numbers, especially given the relative newness of Web subscription efforts.
Analysts often say these subscription sites demonstrate only the power of established brands. Yet the power of an established brand isn’t simply the power of a recognized name. All of these established brands are very good at what they do; they make content worth paying for. That’s how they got to be recognized and established. Brands that do not continue to meet customers’ expectations lose currency fast. Just ask Arthur Andersen about that.
Making content worth paying for is not as easy as it might seem. It requires focusing on the people who use that content, rather than on advertisers or investors. And that’s precisely why the Web’s great grab for your wallet is a good thing. Paying subscribers get attention that users do not. Subscribers are customers. Users are not. And businesses typically bend over backward to please their customers.
Web publishers offering free* content do not work for you. They work for their advertisers–or for anyone else who is helping to pay the bills. After all, publishers have to get paid somehow. Whoever does the paying gets paramount attention.
That will have to change if Web businesses expect to have paying subscribers. Web publishers who want your wallet will have to focus on delivering real value at a level of quality on par with more traditional media.
The early days of the Internet are spectacularly over. Investment capital has gone the way of the dodo bird, and ad revenue remains an endangered species. No doubt some of the largest free* content players can serve enough advertising to survive. But if Web content is going to get a second life through paid subscriptions, publishers are going to have to look not at the content of their users’ character, but at the character of their own content.
