paid content | Internet Marketing Blog

Is a Honolulu Civil Beat subscription worth more than a WSJ.com subscription?

Pierre Omidyar launched eBay before many of us were online, and before online shopping was a multi-billion dollar a year market. But blazing the trail of ecommerce may prove to be a much easier task for Omidyar than building paid online news properties.

Yesterday, the Omidyar launched the Honolulu Civil Beat, an online news publication designed to provide content and facilitate conversation around "the important issues facing Hawaii."

by Patricio Robles 05 May 2010 14:55pm 1 comment

Check in with Foursquare, tear down FT.com's pay wall?

The Financial Times is lucky. It's in the minority of newspapers that can legitimately claim to have found 'success' with an internet pay wall. The company's subscribers pay upwards of $180 a year to access content on the Financial Times' website, FT.com, which is behind one of the more solid pay walls around.

But that pay wall isn't impervious; it may be coming down if you're a certain type of mobile internet user in certain geographic regions. That's because, according to Business Insider, the Financial Times will soon launch an initiative with Foursquare that will give some Foursquare users who check into certain businesses in certain locations the ability to access FT.com without a paid subscription.

by Patricio Robles 12 April 2010 09:00am 1 comment

Boxee's opting for micropayments. Will Hulu listen?

News Corp. and Hulu have been talking a lot about ways they could charge for Hulu content of late. But two months into 2010, we have little word on how that will come to fruition (except a rumor that iPad users will have to pay to watch Hulu). Well, video upstart Boxee has a few ideas.

Last month the digital video provider announced plans to charge for its content. And today, Beet.TV has a video of Boxee CEO Avner Ronen explaining some of the details.

If anything, maybe this could help Hulu open up and let Boxee have access to its video again.

by Meghan Keane 25 February 2010 19:40pm 2 comments

Is the New York Times about to make a big mistake with a new subscription model?

Reports have surfaced indicating that, after much internal discussion and debate, the New York Times is ready to announce its much talked-about subscription model.

According to sources who spoke with New York Magazine, the NYT has settled on a metered model under which NYT online content will remain free but after a certain number of views, users will be prompted to subscribe for further access.

by Patricio Robles 19 January 2010 09:31am 2 comments

Five killer tips for successful paid content businesses

There has been a lot of talk about publishing business models related to paid content. We understand this space pretty well, given that Econsultancy has been operating a ‘freemium’ model successfully for over 10 years now.

But rather than talk about our business model, I wanted to give five tips from my own experience on what I believe is important, and what works, in order to be successful at selling content online.

by Ashley Friedlein 08 January 2010 14:51pm 1 comment

Five markets to watch in 2010

2010 is here. Plenty have made specific predictions about what you can expect this year. Predictions are fun, but sometimes knowing which markets to look at is a better approach.

With that in mind, here are five of the markets you might want to track in 2010.

by Patricio Robles 06 January 2010 09:50am 0 comments

Rupert Murdoch clears the air on the future of journalism

Rupert Murdoch's media empire produces news, but he also has a habit of making it himself. Most recently, he was a headline-creator when he stated he'd be pulling his websites out of Google's index.

Journalism in the 21st century is clearly something that matters a lot to Murdoch, both financially and personally. And in an op-ed piece in his own Wall Street Journal, Murdoch laid out his views on where he sees journalism going, and who needs to stay out of it.

by Patricio Robles 08 December 2009 09:34am 6 comments

Can Microsoft's money save the newspaper industry?

Maybe Rupert Murdoch isn't so crazy after all. Little more than two weeks after he essentially stated "Google? We don't need no stinkin' Google", reports have surfaced that Microsoft is talking with News Corp. and other newspaper publishers.

The proposition Microsoft is reportedly floating: "delist" from Google and give Bing exclusivity when it comes to indexing your content. In exchange, Microsoft would pay the publishers the cold hard cash they're so desperately seeking as print revenues continue their rapid erosion.

by Patricio Robles 24 November 2009 08:59am 5 comments

The market for paid news: does size really matter?

How much is the news worth? It's a question that's weighing on the minds of many news media execs these days as they grapple with the challenge of figuring out new business models.

Paid content looks to be a big part of those new business models, but there's one question that still dogs execs: just how big is the market for paid news?

by Patricio Robles 17 November 2009 09:09am 1 comment

Murdoch: Google? We don't need no stinkin' Google

Rupert Murdoch is a media mogul who hasn't shied away from revealing his true feelings towards Google. The best way to sum them up? If Google didn't exist, he would be all the happier.

Earlier this year, Murdoch asked cable industry execs "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?" His response: media execs should be saying "Thanks, but no thanks" to Google.

by Patricio Robles 09 November 2009 09:03am 13 comments