Asking payment, giving reward

Journalism Online’s payment system is going Live, and it looks like it offers publishing partners significant flexibility.

Sites can let nonpaying readers see the top of an article, while only paying readers see the whole thing; they can allow unlimited reading of certain articles, while charging for others; they can charge by the month or by the click; they can limit free reading to a certain number of articles a month; they can treat readers differently depending on their location; they can charge a single price or have a tiered system; they can give print subscribers free access or charge them, too.

Some News Outlets Ready to Try Charging Online Readers

One Publisher in Pennsylvania is taking advantage of that flexibility and baby-stepping toward charging for some of their content:

In Lancaster, publisher Steinman Enterprises will charge readers outside the circulation area for access to obits, starting with a certain number free and then requiring a fee.

Journalism Online’s Private Beta Goes Public; First Press+ Screenshots

With all of the options available, it’s hopeful some of the experimentation will yield positive results: there are a lot of us who’d love to see more direct, monetary value from the work that goes into creating and publishing news, opinion and entertainment online.

Newsday’s underwhelming results for “pure-play” subscription sales can be instructive: they’re lucky enough to have Cablevision and newspaper customers to serve, but the lack of paid subscribers to newsday.com outside of those customers shows the need to offer more tangible value that’s not easily available elsewhere.

There are technical issues to be worked out still – Search Engine indexing for content placed behind paywalls chief among them. Paywalls can have the effect of “hiding” authors from their community and decimating readership. Google has been offering to work with newspapers and other publishers in this regard. People working the baby-steps is a Good Sign.

Image by uhuru1701 via Flickr

While direct monetary compensation is good to hope for, a larger hope is that publishers aren’t counting on direct subscription payments offering substantial returns. Some returns would be great; creativity to create other streams are well-advised.

Another hope is that the lure of direct subscription revenue (a model we know and love) doesn’t prevent the deeper dive into creative new models that aren’t as well-known. Unproven models will stay that way until time and effort is put in to prove them. Ideas like rewards for frequent readers – e.g. getting a coupon for a free coffee upon clicking through the 10th story this month – is something that can be implemented alongside requests for payment. Popping ads from local businesses based on geography, number or types of articles read, answering survey questions can all work. Even simple “badges” – like “Most Helpful Answer” and “Comment of the Day” have been effective at building a dedicated membership.

Encouraging deeper engagement between author and community will yield direct benefits (authors get read; community members find and relate to voices they like); beyond asking those members to shell out directly, an engaged audience is also something of value to other publishers, advertisers, local businesses, and players we haven’t yet considered. A great way to see what works is getting ideas out in front of your membership, see what resonates and tweak the next ideas based on that feedback.