According to a current study, we’re not overly impressed with Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for use of his on-line news web sites. Of 2,000 people today asked if they would ever pay for on line news, 9 out of ten said ‘No!’. Does quotes about mental health that Murdoch’s choice to charge users to access his news websites is foolish?

I would not spend for news, either, unless…

If I had been asked ‘would you ever pay for on the net news?’, I would in all probability say ‘no’, too. Just after all, in an age when we can usually study about major events on Twitter just before any of the news channels report them, why would we ever want pay for access to their content?

However, I would, and normally do, spend for quality and ‘luxury’ news. I would in no way pay a penny for one particular of the shrinking quantity of cost-free newspapers handed out on my way to operate in a morning, but I would pay for a Sunday broadsheet with all its extras and trimmings (even even though the probabilities of me really reading a lot more than a couple of pages are really compact).

I have also been recognized to sign up to a paid members’ area on the site of a particular football team (which shall stay nameless) to achieve access to extra content not readily available on the principal site: video interviews and press conferences, highlights of reserve and youth team matches, live radio commentary on match days.

Would I pay to study The Sun on the internet? No. There are typically only about 2 paragraphs in every image-dominated post anyway. It only fees a couple of pennies to acquire the real issue so there would not be a great deal worth in applying its web site. The Times? Perhaps, but only if all other top quality news outlets beginning charging, otherwise I’d just go for the no cost 1.

Applying a Credit Card for a 20p Post?

I’m not confident how much Mr Murdoch desires to charge his customers to read an post, but I am guessing there is going to be some sort of account that requires setting up. I definitely couldn’t be bothered to get my wallet out just about every time I wanted to study one thing and I would be pretty hesitant to commit to subscribing.

On the other hand, if they had a similar system to iTunes, whereby you just enter your password to get access to a paid report and your card is billed accordingly, that could make a bit much more sense. But, if I had to do that for every big news provider, it would grow to be incredibly tiresome.

Eventually, they could be shooting themselves in the foot to some extent. If the web page makes it harder and less hassle-free for me to read an report, I’ll probably go elsewhere. I would assume that I would usually be able to study the news for free of charge on the BBC’s website, which would not be superior news for the advertising income of the Murdoch on-line empire.

Copycats

Assuming that I essentially wanted to study an article on a paid website so badly that I handed over my credit card facts to them, what would stop me ‘reporting’ on what the short article said on my freely offered blog? I would envision it would be very hard for a newspaper group to avoid thousands of bloggers disseminating the information freely to their customers who would acquire lots of site visitors in the course of action.

Recipe for Success?

The accomplishment or failure of paid news is in the approach utilised to charge and engage with customers, assuming that the customers value the content hugely enough to deem it worth paying for. The jury is absolutely nonetheless out on the complete notion and the possibilities are that quite a few will try and fail before a profitable system is developed. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see.