Pricing of Digital Product

Our first case analysis write-up was due today. It was an analysis of NYTimes.com and their decision to begin charging subscription fees for its news content. Are people willing to pay a fee for web content? Will web “bundling” help them pay this fee?

The majority of the class felt that it was a good idea for NYTimes to start charging a subscription fee to its site. My group (Jeremy Fern and myself – yep only 2…) found that people really aren’t ready to pay subscription fees yet for news content; especially when they can go elsewhere to find the same content for free. Charging a subscription fee can have other detrimental affects such as inadvertently decreasing advertising dollars (less traffic to your site means less advertising payments).

Here is a couple of good articles on the subject:

Business week: “People are willing to pay”: http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_28/b3841012_mz001.htm

People are willing to pay if they think the content is worth it: http://www.clickz.com/experts/design/freefee/article.php/3310761

When are people willing to pay for online content?: http://samvak.tripod.com/busiweb25.html

BTW – the only online subscription service I pay for is bluemountain.com (online postcards). This used to be free when I started using it, but when they started charging for it I kept it since none of my family lives close by (this was probably the marketing intent too ;)