The Independent: hoping to bring its website into the black
Posted on 04/28/2003 10:52:14 PM PDT by Timesink
8.30am
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The Independent: hoping to bring its website into the black |
Selected areas of Independent.co.uk, including opinion pieces, articles by celebrated Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, the news and sport archive and the cryptic crosswords, will carry a charge from this week.
While much of the site's content will remain free, the Independent is hoping to bring the website into the black by erecting barriers in these four areas as part of a new service called Independent Portfolio.
The Independent's global director of interactive media, Richard Withey, said the website already ran "at or near break even" owing to its low cost base, but now wanted to tip the balance towards profitability.
"Like most broadsheet newspapers we've been struggling to find revenue streams that support these services for a long time. It's pretty obvious that advertising itself doesn't at the moment," Mr Withey said.
"We also feel we have some valuable content that people would pay for, particularly outside the UK. So we decided to select some of our best content and some of our major columnists and crosswords.
"The bulk of the site remains free - our news services remain free and we hope will always remain free."
Independent.co.uk claims to have attracted 25 million page impressions over the month of the Iraq war, up from a usual monthly average of 20 million.
Mr Withey estimated its number of unique users to be slightly more than 1 million.
While page impressions - the number of individual pages opened by a user - will inevitably decline with the introduction of fees, the paper expects most users to stay.
Users have four options: paying £1 to access one item for 24 hours, £5 for a monthly subscription to a section, £30 for an annual subscription to a section and £60 for an annual subscription to all sections.
The Independent's decision is a gamble but one it hopes will generate profit.
Several newspapers have started charging for internet services but only the Wall Street Journal has enjoyed notable success with paid-for web content..
WSJ.com has 664,000 subscribers, each paying between £40 and £50 a year. The WSJ has charged for all its content since its launch in 1996 and announced the first profit from its consumer internet division in October 2002.
The FT began charging for special and archive services on FT.com last July, offering various levels of access for between £75 and £200 a year.
Initially only 17,000 of the website's 3 million users signed up, although this figure has since risen and the website broke even for the first time at the end of last year.
When the Irish Times introduced a 50 euro subscription charge it attracted only 6,000 subscribers from a user base of 1 million.
In November 2002 the website of Madrid-based newspaper El Pais started charging for all content - the first major European newspaper to do so.
For 80 euros (£53) a year, users were invited to join "the club of the well informed". However, El Pais openly admitted it expected to lose 90% of the 500,000 people who use its website.
Le Monde also charges for selected content while the Times makes readers pay for its online crossword.
"The target all along has been to make the website profitable but also to act in support of the printed products and we don't want to mitigate that in any way," Mr Withey said.
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