The website for The News-Review, nrtoday.com, will provide a mix of paid and free content beginning in the middle of December. Here are some of the details and background.
THE CHANGES – THE DETAILS
Most of the locally produced news items that nrtoday.com users have accessed at no charge for the past several years will soon require an online subscription. There will still be a number of valuable news and advertising items available at no charge. People who subscribe to the print edition of the newspaper will pay the lowest price for online access, an additional $3.95 per month. People who do not subscribe to the print edition have the option to buy access to the premium content for $7.95 per month. The online subscriptions also include access to our ePaper which is a very usable online reproduction of the print newspaper. The launch is accompanied by a promotional drawing for an iPad.
THE BACKGROUND
We’ve grown a large online audience over the past several years but advertising revenues alone are insufficient to cover our costs. We’ve also seen some shifting of paid subscriptions to free online readers, which is not a terribly successful business model. We think our online product is important to our future but only if we can build a self-sustaining business model.
There is a sea change in newspaper websites right now as a great many daily newspapers are in the process of converting to models where readers pay at least some of the costs. There are a variety of models offering some free content and some paid content, but there are also metered models that charge for each item read, rather than a subscription. We’re launching with a model that our business systems can currently support.
I was talking with one smart local merchant over the weekend who told me that he made a tough decision a few years ago, choosing a more expensive product line and closing out a lower cost line where he didn’t feel he could compete. As we spoke I thought about the imminent launch of our All Access Option.
We’ve done our homework as well as we could. We’ve looked at various revenue models and price points; we’ve estimated sales volume. We put together a promotion team that came up with the idea for an iPad drawing and developed some very nice ads. We’ve worked with the tech people to modify the website to make adjustments that works from a technology angle and one that is easily navigated by subscribers. We’ve worked with the systems people to develop an interim subscription system until a more permanent means of online payment can be integrated. We notified our staff and Facebook friends before the public launch. We’ve spent the money. We designed a large ad schedule and we went public – today. During the next year we’ve budgeted more to develop online- only content than we expect online subscriber revenue will generate … developing an even stronger product for future years.
Will it all be worth it? I sure hope so. I suppose it is little different than what retail and manufacturing businesses do every day, but it is more than a little different for us.
Happy Holidays,
Mark
