According to a current study, we’re not overly impressed with Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for use of his on the net news web pages. Of 2,000 men and women asked if they would ever spend for on the internet news, 9 out of 10 mentioned ‘No!’. Does that mean that Murdoch’s choice to charge users to access his news web-sites is foolish?

I would not spend for news, either, unless…

If I had been asked ‘would you ever pay for on the internet news?’, I would probably say ‘no’, too. Just after all, in an age when we can typically study about important events on Twitter just before any of the news channels report them, why would we ever want spend for access to their content?

Nevertheless, I would, and usually do, spend for high-quality and ‘luxury’ news. I would by no means pay a penny for a single of the shrinking number of free newspapers handed out on my way to operate in a morning, but I would pay for a Sunday broadsheet with all its extras and trimmings (even even though the possibilities of me basically reading much more than a few pages are incredibly small).

I have also been recognized to sign up to a paid members’ location on the web page of a certain football team (which shall stay nameless) to achieve access to further content material not readily available on the principal website: video interviews and press conferences, highlights of reserve and youth team matches, live radio commentary on match days.

Would winoppo.com spend to read The Sun on the web? No. There are typically only about two paragraphs in every single image-dominated post anyway. It only expenses a handful of pennies to purchase the real issue so there would not be considerably value in employing its site. The Times? Perhaps, but only if all other high quality news outlets beginning charging, otherwise I’d just go for the free 1.

Using a Credit Card for a 20p Post?

I’m not positive how considerably Mr Murdoch wants to charge his users to read an article, but I am guessing there is going to be some sort of account that demands setting up. I surely could not be bothered to get my wallet out each and every time I wanted to study one thing and I would be pretty hesitant to commit to subscribing.

On the other hand, if they had a equivalent method to iTunes, whereby you just enter your password to achieve access to a paid short article and your card is billed accordingly, that could possibly make a bit a lot more sense. But, if I had to do that for just about every major news provider, it would become really tiresome.

In the end, they could be shooting themselves in the foot to some extent. If the web page tends to make it harder and much less hassle-free for me to study an report, I’ll possibly go elsewhere. I would assume that I would often be in a position to study the news for free on the BBC’s internet site, which would not be superior news for the advertising income of the Murdoch on the internet empire.

Copycats

Assuming that I actually wanted to read an write-up on a paid web-site so badly that I handed more than my credit card specifics to them, what would quit me ‘reporting’ on what the write-up stated on my freely available blog? I would visualize it would be pretty really hard for a newspaper group to protect against thousands of bloggers disseminating the info freely to their customers who would get lots of website traffic in the process.

Recipe for Results?

The accomplishment or failure of paid news is in the technique made use of to charge and engage with customers, assuming that the users value the content hugely adequate to deem it worth paying for. The jury is definitely still out on the whole concept and the probabilities are that several will attempt and fail before a profitable system is developed. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see.