Charging For Content – Can It Really Work On The Internet?

As the internet has rapidly evolved from being an information portal to an ecommerce haven, the age old debate about charging for content that was once free has re-emerged, with the news that Rupert Murdoch has been considering charging users to access newspapers online. With the idea obvious to make money, it would seem only fair that if you have to buy a paper in the “real world” you should also pay to read online, but does everyone agree?

Any company that is considering charging for access to content faces a wealth of issues when actually looking at the implications of doing this. We have explored some of these issues below, but generally, this decision to step into the world of charging people to access something that was once free, could lead to devastating implications for the business.

Loss of Readers / Customers – It is fair to say the regular and loyal followers of your publication will probably pay to continue reading if you set the amount to be worthwhile to the consumer. But, you can also bet that the majority of people will simply just find the information elsewhere. You will probably end up diverting your customers onto other publications, ones they have never considered before and run the large possibility of losing that reader or consumer for the foreseeable future.

Google Can’t See It – The only way to stop people seeing the content for free is to hide it behind some sort of secured administration area, where only people that have paid can access it. Now, if you and I can not see the content unless we pay, not can Google and other engines, so you begin to lose the amount of content being indexed by the engines, you then start to lose search ranking placements and the overall consequence of this is your visitor numbers will drop rapidly. Content is the king for Google, and if it cant see it, then how can it possibly know how much you are releasing?

Advertising Revenue Falls – The less readers or visitors you have, the less advertising revenue you will earn, because the majority of advertisers set their budgets on the amount of exposure their advert will get. So if this drops, then its only fair to expect the advertiser will not pay you as much money to be on the site. This is also the same for Adsense revenue, if you have fewer visitors, you will have fewer clicks and thus lose money through this avenue as well.

Content Receives Less Exposure – Content on the internet becomes a massive hit in only one way, people spreading the word about it by blogging about it, posting about it, sending links to their friends and basically social networking measures. If this can not happen due to the content only being accessible to paid readers, you stand no chance of your latest publication finding its way around the internet and increasing your exposure.

There are times however when charging for content can work, and indeed has worked. Publishers of EBooks, resources and other types of publications do successful charge for access to their content, but whether this would work for say an online newspaper is debatable. People will pay for a well written guide to something they are interested in, but whether they would pay for something that they could probably find else where for free is the main issue.

In 2005, the NYTimes.com website started charging to access parts of its content. Two years later in September 2007, they decided to drop the charge and once again make the website free to access all areas, and this was at a time when people had more money and a freedom to spend, unlike today. And they only charged around $50 a year to access the website, which is a negligible amount when you think how much you would pay for a daily newspaper in publication. The report started that they project had met its targets, but when compared to the forecasted growth in online advertising revenue, it made the project unfeasible.

So, if publications do start to think about charging for access to the content in 2009 or 2010, for something that has always been traditionally free, it will be very interesting to see the effects on not only the said publication, but also the internet as a whole.

Written By Ian Spencer - Web Design Gloucestershire