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>The Journal decided to stop letting people read articles free from Google after discovering nearly 1 million people each month were abusing the three-article l

by jasode 9y ago

>The Journal decided to stop letting people read articles free from Google after discovering nearly 1 million people each month were abusing the three-article limit. They would copy and paste Journal headlines into Google and read the articles for free, then clear their cookies to reset the meter and read more, Watford said. After the harder paywall, what's the best guess of the percentage of those google-copy-pasters will convert[1] to subscribers paying $278 or $296.94 or $308.91 per year? My guess is less than 1/10th of 1%. I assume the vast majority of the 1 million are casual readers who don't have $300 discretionary income to splurge on a subscription. If they can't read for free with a workaround, they'll do without it. In related trivia, I just read that The Economist's strategy is to allow the google-copy-pasters. I'm not judging either company as right. It's interesting they go about it differently. [1] 1 year costs must include full rate to the teaser introductory rates: https://buy.wsj.com/wsjusjune17/ https://buy.wsj.com/wsjusjune17/

i_cant_speel 9y ago
Agreed. I just downloaded an extension so I don't even have to bother with searching Google anymore.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JoshTriplett 9y ago
> I assume the vast majority of the 1 million are casual readers who don't have $300 discretionary income to splurge on a subscription. Or that the vast majority have much better uses for $300 than paying for a newspaper.
xemdetia 9y ago
I think that's the main thing that is different than my normal relationship with a newspaper. If I see an article that catches my fancy I buy that newspaper, if I don't I don't buy it (or the 'Sunday version'). While the universe would prefer I pay a subscription it's just not how I have ever interacted with a news publishing outfit. I think part of my issue with the wsj complaint here is just trying to go back to the subscriber driven model but I have never worked with them that way. That's what makes that teaser rate even more frustrating- I just would want to pay and not try to make a financial decision or subscription. Can I just pay $5 for a week and not have a dog and pony show around it? I'm not so interested in a particular publication to want to make this kind of commitment.
runeks 9y ago
The hardship for publishers won't end until two things happen, in my opinion: 1) they are willing to charge a reasonable price per article (no $300/year subscription) and 2) they are able to charge per article, in a cost-effective manner (i.e. "micropayments").
- dcosson 9y ago
  Why doesn't this exist yet? It seems so obvious, so many people get news from Facebook, twitter, Reddit, (and to a lesser extent HN) on an article by article basis. But all news sites delude themselves into thinking they can make these people loyal customers of their content, to the tune of paying $10-30 per month. I would happily pay $0.50 or something per article (maybe price adjusted by word count, within reason) to be able to get news from a wide variety of sources and engage with comments on the social/aggregator sites. Is it just too big of a chicken and egg problem to coordinate a single broker for this across many sites? Unfortunately a broker is needed because I don't think there exists an external payment method with fees reasonable enough to make a lot of sub-1$ payments. That used to be touted as a use for Btc a few years ago but now btc fees are higher than credit card fees at something like $1-$3.

by jasode 9y ago

i_cant_speel 9y ago

Agreed. I just downloaded an extension so I don't even have to bother with searching Google anymore.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

JoshTriplett 9y ago

> I assume the vast majority of the 1 million are casual readers who don't have $300 discretionary income to splurge on a subscription. Or that the vast majority have much better uses for $300 than paying for a newspaper.

xemdetia 9y ago

I think that's the main thing that is different than my normal relationship with a newspaper. If I see an article that catches my fancy I buy that newspaper, if I don't I don't buy it (or the 'Sunday version'). While the universe would prefer I pay a subscription it's just not how I have ever interacted with a news publishing outfit. I think part of my issue with the wsj complaint here is just trying to go back to the subscriber driven model but I have never worked with them that way. That's what makes that teaser rate even more frustrating- I just would want to pay and not try to make a financial decision or subscription. Can I just pay $5 for a week and not have a dog and pony show around it? I'm not so interested in a particular publication to want to make this kind of commitment.

runeks 9y ago

The hardship for publishers won't end until two things happen, in my opinion: 1) they are willing to charge a reasonable price per article (no $300/year subscription) and 2) they are able to charge per article, in a cost-effective manner (i.e. "micropayments").

dcosson 9y ago
Why doesn't this exist yet? It seems so obvious, so many people get news from Facebook, twitter, Reddit, (and to a lesser extent HN) on an article by article basis. But all news sites delude themselves into thinking they can make these people loyal customers of their content, to the tune of paying $10-30 per month. I would happily pay $0.50 or something per article (maybe price adjusted by word count, within reason) to be able to get news from a wide variety of sources and engage with comments on the social/aggregator sites. Is it just too big of a chicken and egg problem to coordinate a single broker for this across many sites? Unfortunately a broker is needed because I don't think there exists an external payment method with fees reasonable enough to make a lot of sub-1$ payments. That used to be touted as a use for Btc a few years ago but now btc fees are higher than credit card fees at something like $1-$3.