October 16, 2007
Should WSJ.com go free?
Besides, I reckon that ad revenues can make up for lost subcription revenues. According to Dow Jones, WSJ.com gets 8.3 million unique visitors a month, and would need to raise that number to something over 20 million uniques in order to keep total revenues constant. Never mind the accuracy of the numbers, the key thing here is the percentage increase: readership would have to go up by about 140%. Slate’s readership went up by many multiples of that after it went free, and I reckon the WSJ’s would as well. People looking for financial news right now don’t visit WSJ.com because they know it’s a pay site. If they know it’s free, it could easily become the first best source for all financial news and analysis online.
The New York Times recently went (almost entirely) free online, of course, and FT.com is offering free material to infrequent browsers. I’ve written a piece about these questions for FT Magazine, but confounded dead-tree deadlines means it won’t appear here until 20 October. But here’s a hint: I’ve been looking at the work of this man.
Test comment from kate.
Posted by: Kate Mackenzie | October 9th, 2007 at 5:04 pm | Report this commentI think the WSJ is useful to my daily job (at the bank) and my long term utility, too (the occasional retirement fund decision). The NY Times is a fire hazard; at least it was when I subscribed in my naive twenties.
Great to see your blog! I’m a big fan.
Posted by: caveat bettor | October 18th, 2007 at 7:08 pm | Report this commentRitholtz has a decent idea:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/10/advice-for-murd.html
“Move the WSJ/Dow Jones archives out from behind the subscription-only firewall. Keep the most recent WSJ subscription only — perhaps 30 days, but certianly no more than 90 days maximum.
I cannot see why WSJ.com would want to give up ~$65 million dollars per year in annual revenue. But we know that freeing the archives means that the Google bots will be spidering this content, and eventually identifying WSJ pages as search results. Dow Jones advertisers will be seeing their ads served more often, and the additional click thrus and page views will only accrue more revenue to DJ.”
Posted by: Dave | October 19th, 2007 at 12:12 am | Report this comment