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Will they pay for it? (Part 2)

Have you been thinking about charging your Web-site visitors for access to premium content? If so, you might want to reflect on some industry trends.

In a January 23, 2009 Market Movers blog article, Felix Salmon waxes pessimistically about U.S. News's recently-announced plan to launch U.S. News Weekly, a PDF-downloadable digital magazine — for $19.95 a year.

Comparing the U.S. News initiative to Slate Magazine's "disasterous attempt" to do basically the same thing a decade ago, Salmon predicts doom.

I give this experiment six months to a year before it's abandoned when the writers for the weekly realise they're basically shouting into a void, and the publishers realise they're not making any money off it. It might even last less time than that, if US News print subscribers don't bother to download the PDF -- which is being offered to them for free. This product not only isn't worth $19.95 a year, it's not even valuable enough to persuade anybody to subscribe to the print edition of the magazine, or to renew their subscription. It's doomed, and the only question is when it's going to die.

Even if Salmon's predictions turn out to be accurate, this doesn't necessarily mean that a subscription model for premium content cannot work at all. In fact, nSiteful is working with several clients to develop premium content areas for those clients' existing customers. Providing existing customers with the perk of exclusive content is a great way to add value to your customer relationships and thereby increase retention rates and even soften the impact of pricing increases.

What it does mean is that before you spend too much time poring over leather swatches for that new Mercedes you've been eying, make sure both of your eyes are wide open before diving into such a venture.

Related nSiteful Blog entry: Will they pay for it? Probably not!