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i haven't seen any numbers or story either, and habve been intensely 
curious how they would fare.  if those numbers are right, i would look at 
them as an optimist. that seems like a good start.  on the negative side, 
 i dont like the WSJ online as well as I like the NYT online.  I'm not 
exactly sure why, but I think it might because the NYT has done a better 
job at getting the "look and feel" of it's paper online that the WSJ has.

Matt Carroll, Boston Globe

B. Compaine wrote:
> 
> 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
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