Delivering the evening keynote at the Syndicate Conference was Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing senior VP for Business Development and Marketing, Jessica Perry, whose Wall Street Journal Online isn’t giving all of its content away online.
Have you found a way to get people to do what the Wall Street Journal Online does, and get them to pay for content? Let us know how you did it at WebProWorld.
When I received the emailed notes on Jessica Perry’s evening keynote address from Murdok publisher Rich Ord, I suddenly remembered something about the Journal’s online presence: when it first launched, it was free. Come to think of it, so was the New York Times, which delivered an 8-page PDF by email every day for free, and that included the daily crossword puzzle.
(That was a long, long time ago. At least 1997.)
A free version of the site might be a surprise to the WSJ.com’s existing subscribers. Perry noted that the site has 764,000 paying subscribers. Those fees vary based on monthly or annual terms, and whether or not the user also subscribes to the print versions of the Wall Street Journal.
“WSJ Online revenue is growing quickly but it is not equaling print revenue. It may take more than 15 years before online revenue surpasses print,” Perry said.
Online efforts have worked out for the Journal. Its MarketWatch integration “has gone extremely well,” according to Perry, and the News Tracker service they debuted has been “very successful.”
Syndication has only scratched the surface with RSS, as Perry noted only six percent of online users actively use the technology. Whether content gets created and syndicated freely, or exists as a for-pay model, Perry doesn’t see any problems.
“When it comes to content on the Internet there is plenty of room for everybody,” she said. “What we have at present between blogs and the major media is a symbiosis. You are starting to see more cooperative efforts between blogs and the major media.”
Not every effort to involve the online community has went as planned. At MarketWatch, Herbal Life chief executive was voted CEO of the Year in an online poll. Perry said that ” some last minute ballot stuffing by the herbal life distributors” affected that result.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
