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On Mon, 10 Apr 1995, Bill Densmore wrote:

> Rex: 
> Thanks for your thoughtful comments. What do you do for S&P presently?
> See our replies, below. 
> 
> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
> | Bill Densmore -- President                     NEWSHARE CORPORATION |
> | One Bank St., P.O. Box 367                    densmore@newshare.com | 
> | Williamstown MA  01267                        voice: (413) 458-8001 |
> |                   "The Internet's first news brokerage"             | 
> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
> 
> On Sun, 9 Apr 1995, R Ballard wrote:
> 
> > Yes.  I had been trying to get Dow Jones to do this for 2 years. 

> In what capacity were you trying? Will they ever? 

I was responsible for distribution of the DowVision to 3rd party 
corporate servers and WAIS inc.  WAIS didn't want to put authentication 
schemes at the user level.  Eventually they agreed to put the WAIS server 
on the internet with a WEB interface that authenticated the TCP port.

We hadn't seen any cash revenue and have been serving an estimated 10,000 
users by the end of the 6 month "trial".  We don't know how much the 
market is willing to pay.  I personally wouldn't mind paying $10/month.

Dow Jones is likely to let WAIS sell the URL rights and collect a flat 
/user monthly rate.  Wais doesn't want to get into the business of 
collecting receivables.  A third party billing system such as yours would 
go well in partnership with WAIS.  All you would need to do is collect 
the money and authenticate the users.

>  Your 
> > pricing is too uncertain.  You need to give the subscriber some 
> > certainty.  If he knows he can get 2000 pages for $20, he will page to 
> > his hearts delight.  If he knows it will cost him 1 cent/page, he will 
> > try to count every page.  Sell in bulk.  Sell the increments in bulk as 
> > well, the next 20,000 pages could go for $10.  Start with these lower 
> > rates and adjust them upward as your market establishes itself.
> 
> Pricing will be up to our Publishing Members, who "own" the User Members. 
> For example, say S&P has oneline users of its services with which it has  
> an account relationship. And let's say the S&P server machine runs the 
> NEwshare software. But let's say, for marketing reasons, S&P doesn't want 
> to nickel and dime its users. So it says, "OK, you can have 1,000 pages 
> of content for $50 per month. The user who clicks to 578 pages pays $50. 
> So does the user who clicks to 999 pages. S&P makes a lot more money on 
> the 578-page user because it's cost to "acquire" those pages for the user 
> is the same in either case -- a uniform amount of between, say, five and 
> 10 cents per click. Do you understand? The "per click" amount may be 
> invisible to some users; that's a function of the marketing objectives of 
> the Publishing Member.

You should define the price and negotiate flat-fees or royalty agreements 
to cover the different providers.  If you are carrying 30 publications, 
and each wants $30/month/user, your customers will lose interest in your 
server very quickly.  There is something about suddenly "discovering" 
that some user, employee, or even you have racked up a $900/month 
commitment for on-line info.  I started cutting services when I reached 
$100/month.

> > > The user should define the value of the work, not 
> the commercial 
> > publisher.  You should have "click servers" that will proxy information 
> > to the PD services.  If the user wants to clidk through 2000 pages of 
> > usenet, you can increase the distribution per click to commercial services.

> Explain this thought a bit more. I don't understand.
If you bundle PR NewsWire, Wall-Street Journal, usenet news, and Edgar 
SEC filings into one package, the user might be thrilled to browse 
through megabytes of "Cheap Copy", that means you can pay Dow Jones more
for the Journal, which is a brand that people recognize.

> > Pages should be defined carefully.
> 
> A page is one URL request. The PM defines how much is on that page -- 
> once again, that is a marketing/pricing function which is between the PM 
> and its users. If a page is heavy with graphics, there will be a charge 
> for reach downloaded graphic. If one graphic is 400K -- a very pixel-rich 
> photo, for example -- that will still be one click, at present. We are 
> charging for content, not bandwidth, remember.

That works.  The one that upsets people is when they click a story and 
then get charged for 10 clicks (Wall Street Journal articles over NRS are 
a killer this way - some stories can run $10/story.  That's usually when 
they hire a "librarian" and forbid direct NRS access.  Worse, they just 
unplug completely.

	Rex Ballard.

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon Apr 10 21:59:36 1995
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