Saving Print Media #2: Making Paid Content Work
Traditional media is in a crisis. I recently posted 6 steps for print media to survive. To summarize: collaborate; stop printing; own the digital reader; give to all; reap cost benefits; make your content work for the technology. It leaves one question open: what do you do about website content?
Here is the basic problem: good content drives traffic; good content costs money; traditional online advertising around content is not effective enough to cover the costs. Read this about the Seattle Post Intelligencer experiment: traffic down 20% since they cut staff and just went online only. Even a really well run newspaper just on the web and just based on ad revenue will not work.
So, I have one more step in my plan. Start charging for web content. But, you can't follow the Wall St. Journal model. It is too expensive and will only attract your most die hard readers.
Here's how you make it work:
If you are working with other media to standardize and distribute free media readers, work together to create a major media subscription. $50/year or $5/month and you get access to all the content you want. Every paper, every magazine, every premium online media site. Pool the money and distribute it based on traffic. If you create better content, you get paid more. Ad revenue would also be there to help.
Most comments on my posts about these industries is you will never get them to do something this radical. Could be. But, if traditional media does not admit they need to change everything, they will continue to fade away.
