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Ask HN: Is the WSJ's "Pro Edition" a good business model?
The Wall Street Journal is charging extra for a "professional" subscription with access to premium features.
From TechCrunch:
"Dow Jones debuted a premium business news site dubbed The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition in an attempt to get companies to pay up $588 a year for access to more personalized, business-related news and analysis."
See: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/08/wall-street-journal-professional-edition
Does anyone know how well this "super-premium" business model is working for WSJ?
I keep seeing links to articles on WSJ.com marked up with the "Pro" tag, and it got me wondering whether or not this was a viable monetization strategy for other business-focused content sites.
For instance: why doesn't Google have a similar "Pro" edition of Google Finance? Is it because "freemium content" is a poor business model?
- hga 16y agoOne indicator of possible success would be seeing its major competitor, the Financial Times, follow it. I'd have to wonder if Google Finance is even in the same business, e.g. unlike the WSJ or FT it doesn't charge "subscribers" for regular content at all. The WSJ has some free articles and lots more if it thinks the link is redirected through Google (perhaps the Pro Edition articles don't allow that???), the FT only allows you to read 3 articles per month without free registration, then at allows a bit more than a dozen per month the last time I checked. One thing to look for is non-delayed market info, you have to pay a lot more to get it without a 15 minute or whatever delay.