The Web isn't free

NEW YORK -- A Seybold New York, held here April 21-25 session, devoted to the aspects of running a subscription-based web site, allowed the Wall Street Journal to talk about its business model for charging for web content.

Neil Budde, the editor of the Interactive Edition, announced the site's acquisition of its 100,000th customer.

"This is largely a new audience, or occasional buyers of our print product," Budde said. He said that the "vast majority" of the 100,000 customers pay the full $49 per year (a $29 per year rate is offered to subscribers of the print edition).

"From the very beginning," Budde said, "our assumption was that there would be enough rich content that people would pay for it."

After flirting with a proprietary on-line system, the Interactive Edition began to look toward the Web, so that the JOURNAL could "focus more of our energy on the content and less on the technology."

The Interactive Edition has a dedicated news staff of about 40, he said. They cull material from the print side and from the organization's news wires, "and we have some reporters who write for us as well."

"We have a unique niche," Budde said. "We're serving a business audience and they may be a little more willing to spend money. But I think the lessons are true across the board -- put resources behind it, put the value there and assume a certain reasonableness to the price."

He said the Interactive Edition wasn't "particularly scientific" about how it picked its price.

"We did some market research," Budde said, "but mostly it was looking around and what our gut told us to try."

-- dmc

See also Seybold successes: New York move; melds print, new media

See also ABCs of PDF

A web special from THE COLE PAPERS, May 1997, Copyright (c) 1997, All Rights Reserved.