Why do news sites like the Wall Street Journal block off most of their content behind a pay wall?
Answer: NewsCorp owner Rupert Murdoch believes there’s more money to be made forcing users to pay for content directly than by the ad revenue generated by links to stories. In the WSJ’s case, he’s probably right. However, for any other news site the paywall strategy won’t work, because conversations are driving links instead of scarcity these days…
Promoting Stories Via Conversation Instead of Scarcity
The inspiration for this post comes from two stories. The first is Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Op-Ed in the WSJ about ‘How Google Can Help Newspapers’. The second is a GigOM article questioning ‘Does Google Even Understand What News Is’?
Three quarters into the GigaOM post, Kevin Kelleher makes a point that got me nodding my head in agreement:
Another thing Schmidt blithely overlooks is how conversational the web has become through social media. No one is going to mention on Twitter or Facebook a story cloistered behind a paywall. The evolution of the web is pushing users away from paid content, not toward it. And it’s generally not Google’s practice to hinder the technology as it evolves.
What does this tell you?
To me it shouts loud and clear that trying to charge for stories that aren’t unique is a completely losing strategy that bloggers and news sites shouldn’t emulate. For the guerrilla marketers out there, it’s also a huge opportunity to kick butt by building networks based on the distribution of ‘free’ content. There’s a reason I put free in quotation marks, and here it is…
My business model (every human should have one) is based on freemium, and I encourage you to replicate this model in the way that works best for you:
- Give it away.
- Give blog posts, advice, and valuable information away to readers and inspire conversation that helps establish me as a trusted resource and person to be sought out for advice.
- Help people get rolling with effective social media networks (believe me, networking and building a base of connections is the most important thing you will ever do, especially if just starting out).
- Charge for services related to social media network setup, analytics, research, testing, and sales strategy.
Simple, right? That’s why it confounds me as to why the major newspapers and news sites still think charging for content in an online world devoid of scarcity is a good idea. What’s you take?
FYI…Planning is on for the first Vermont Social Media Bootcamp — Details to come.