FT Digital BusinessScottish news site Scotsman.com has defied the current trend for free web news by charging for its comment and analysis section.

Around 10 per cent of the site's content will be available under a new subscription, which follows 18 months' research into successful paid content models.

The strategy is designed to complement the site's other income streams, including its digital archive and web advertising, rather than replace them.

Scotsman.com will be hoping its new deal helps to attract and retain more readers as web advertising typically clocks up revenue according to the amount of site traffic.

Alistair Brown, general manager of Scotsman.com, said that this 'hybrid' approach to generating income was validated by the recent announcement that the New York Times is introducing a similar payment model.

"As a publishing group, the vast majority of our revenue comes from the newspapers. We have to support them and this is our contribution," he told journalism.co.uk.

"You don't charge for what's popular - you charge for what is unique. Readers want insight and a Scottish perspective on the world - and that's what our columnists have got."

The annual premium is £29.95. However, Scottish readers are being targeted with a special pre-pay subscription bundle costing £19.95 per quarter. This package includes full web and digital archive access as well as a subscription to the newspaper in a bid to encourage loyalty among readers in the highly competitive Scottish newspaper market.

Other publishers have reported take-up by roughly 0.5 per cent of readership; by this guide Scotsman.com would register around 2,500 paid subscriptions.

Future subscription packages could include weekend newspaper subscription and weekday news site access, reflecting changing readership patterns.

"The world is changing and people's habits are changing," he said.

"The classic story here is that an Edinburgh taxi driver said he uses the website but doesn't read the paper.

"Scotsman.com has moved from generating a very small percentage of turnover to contributing a significant profit to the business."

The site expects to lose around five per cent of traffic generated through RSS feeds and web search results as both systems work most effectively when users can link directly to a story, rather than needing to register or pay first.

Sun Online's risky strategy

Like its rivals, Scotsman.com benefits from surges in traffic when big stories are picked up and linked to by other news sites. For this reason, key areas of the site will remain free.

A June story on Princess Di and cocaine generated 200,000 page impressions in a few hours after being picked up by US gossip site the Drudge Report.

The story had been broken by the Sun but was not available in full online. In order to encourage readers to buy the print edition Sun Online publishes truncated versions of some major news stories. However, as the Scotsman's Mr Brown pointed out, this strategy can hit your online presence hard.

"Imagine being the editor of the Sun and knowing that you lost 200,000 page views that day because of that policy," he said.

Ironically, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of Sun's parent company News Corporation, gave a landmark speech in April admitting that newspapers have failed to fully exploit the internet and must embrace the digital age.

"Since Murdoch's speech it has been great to see hard-bitten journalists, editors and publishers realise the significance of the internet," said Mr Brown.

"It is dawning on them that the web is essential to the future of the newspaper, and Murdoch has helped to convert the stragglers."

Delicate balance of paid and free content

News sites have had limited success introducing paid content. The most successful subscriptions have been run by niche news sites or financial services such as FT.com and WSJ.com, who have a particularly affluent readership or specialist content.

Newspaper websites have tried to stem the decline in print readership by limiting their online content or introducing a payment barrier. Payment schemes have had limited success because users can switch to rival sites offering full coverage and free access. Fees for speciality services, such as columnists and crosswords, are more common.

More news from journalism.co.uk:
New York Times fishes for more fees
Soaring web use blots the Sun
Flying start for Scotsman digital archive
Photo-blog drives festival traffic



Comments

BeachBum, 05:22 21 July 2005

I apologise in advance for the length of the following rant :-)

As an ex-pat Englishman living in Australia I tend to see the UK media with a viewpoint that is different to when I was resident in the mothership. To me the UK sites such as the BBC, Grauniad, Independent and the Scotsman provide not just quality news reporting and comment but also a link back to the culture, both past and contemporary, of the land of my birth. Sadly, the quality of content is not available from local sources.

I'm not sure if you are aware of the standards that are prevalent in the Australian media but it doesn't come close to that of the UK. Most of the TV content is below par. The two public service channels, the ABC and SBS, do a great job considering the lack of funding they receive but the three major commercial channels, Seven, Nine and Ten, are pretty shabby and broadcast mostly US imports.

The larger newspapers are dominated by Uncle Rupert and the content is pretty much interchangeable in all of them. The Sydney Morning Herald is the exception but my local newsagent said if I ordered it - they don't stock it locally - that it would take two days to arrive. Given that it's available online I can't really see the point in buying the dead
tree version other than I can take it to the beach.

But I digress. The Scotsman's subscription model is broken. They are starting from the premise that the online version stops readers buying the printed edition. While this may be true in Scotland, it's far from the reality of ex-pat Brits that like to keep in touch with events at home. For us there is no print copy to be bought locally.

The BBC is already 'border controlling' its online output. Some of the content is available only to UK internet users and that is mildly peeving for someone that paid his licence fee for 20 years.

I will admit that there are perfectly legal ways to circumvent some of the problems mentioned above. For example, the Scotsman requires readers to register and sign-in before reading some of its articles. This is not needed if one uses the links provided in the Scotsman's RSS feed. The BBC's border controls can be overcome if one has a shell account in the UK as it makes it appear as though the reader is connecting from within the border.

There's also the matter of value. If I want to dip into a half a dozen or so articles at each of the UK sites I mentioned earlier and paid a 30 quid subscription to each it would soon start to add up to a tidy sum. After all, when I buy a printed edition of a newspaper I get the complete issue, not just a selection of articles. The printable PDF editions that some are now offering almost solve the usability problem but the reader still pays twice as the reader has to own and printer and attendant consumables.

There's one UK publication that I would pay for a full online version: Private Eye. It's still the best paper in the world.

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