LouisJvR.com | Finding pockets of digital excellence

Indeed this is one of my favourite topics – free content vs. paid for content?

Needless to say this is a very intriguing debate and not at all an easy decision to make for content publishers.

Enter The Economist with this article on The year of the paywall* – an excerpt:

In the coming months Rupert Murdoch, News Corp’s boss, is expected to make good on his promise to introduce paywalls on the websites of the bigger publications in his stable, such as the Times of London and the Sun. Last month Axel Springer, a large German publisher, began charging for some of its newspapers. Variety, a trade publication for Hollywood, has begun demanding money. The New York Times is pondering a similar move. Even the Guardian, a British newspaper that has long been an evangelist for free news online, has launched a paid-for iPhone application (though accessing stories is free once the app has been downloaded). The Economist recently introduced a paywall for the print-edition contents list on its website.

Content publishers (read: media owners) are on the threshold of getting to grips with profiting from digital whilst balancing reader expectations.

I do believe this is an exciting time to be involved in the content business. Scary yes, but exciting nonetheless.

*Paywall is defined as: A feature of a website that only allows access to certain pages or data to paid up subscribers OR… as www.urbandictionary.com puts it: “The techy part of a web system that makes you pay dosh to get to the goodies...”