Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 14:40:13 -0400
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: owner-online-news@planetarynews.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
X-Status: A
Unless I missed a discussion buried in another thread, I haven't seen any
mention here on an AP report last week with early results of Dow Jones'
brave thrust into the world of real subscriptions.
According to the report, since Sept 21 Wall Street Journal Interactive has
signed up 30,000 paying customers, 60%-65% of whom are not print
subcribers. There are another 100,000 still free trhough the end of the
year on the MS Explorer deal.
The article also says that WSJ Interactive has 30 advertisers paying $5,000
to $20,000 per month.
Now one can look at this as an optimist or pessimist as to success so far.
30,000 out of a paid subscription of 1.8 million is not much. On the other
hand, it's likely by far the most successful yet of any "newspaper" getting
real reader payment from the Web.
Some rough calculations indicates that the WSJ-I is pulling in revenue of
$4.5-$5.0 million annually -- assuming no growth in subscriptions or
advertising, which is a very conservative view. Of this, rougly 25% is from
subscriber payments -- generally in line with the ratio of major print
newspapers.
I take an optimistic viewpoint -- it looks encouraging for me. Of course,
I've been saying for quite awhile that if high quality content such as the
WSJ can't make a go of a reader support, who will?
Benjamin Compaine
Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunications
Chairman, Center for Information Industry Research
Temple University
215-204-6434 e-mail: bcompaine@usa.net
***********************************
http://astro.temple.edu/~ciir
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Posted to ONLINE-NEWS. Made possible by Nando.net - http://www.nando.net
From owner-online-news@nando.net Tue Oct 15 18:16:27 1996
Received: from parsifal.nando.net (root@parsifal.nando.net [152.52.2.7]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id SAA18289 ; for ; Tue, 15 Oct 1996 18:16:27 -0400
Received: (from root@localhost) by parsifal.nando.net (8.7/8.6.9) id PAA29826 for online-news-outgoing; Tue, 15 Oct 1996 15:35:41 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from server.indra.com (server.indra.com [204.144.142.2]) by parsifal.nando.net (8.7/8.6.9) with ESMTP id PAA29808 for ; Tue, 15 Oct 1996 15:35:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from indra.com by server.indra.com (8.7.6/Spike-8-1.0)
id NAA12209; Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:34:30 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from rmii.com by indra.com (8.8.0/Spike-8-1.0)
id NAA28668; Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:34:30 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from [166.93.1.143]
by rmii.com with smtp
(Smail-3.1.29.1 #10) id m0vDFFv-001EA8C; Tue, 15 Oct 96 13:34 MDT
Message-Id:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: online-news@planetarynews.com