UsableMarkets

Not so long ago I ran a highly scientific poll asking people what they would pay for news. The results are now in. But first ….

We read in the FT that the NYTimes is now considering charging for their content. With respect to what they would charge, we read:

The New York Times is preparing the ground to start charging for its news online, asking readers if they would be willing to pay between $30 and $60 a year to access its website.

The publisher disclosed that it was considering a $5 monthly fee for online access in a survey of readers. It asked print subscribers whether they would be willing to pay a discounted rate of $2.50 a month.

If one assumes that the average reader reads about three stories a day in the NYTimes, that comes to 90 stories a month, which would equal about 5 cents a story for non-subscribers, and 2.5 cents for subscribers.

Now to our poll results:

Many people (about 25%) will still want to read the newspaper for free, but the rest would be willing to pay a certain amount, ranging from 1 to 5 cents (about 60%), and and some much higher. What does this tell us (aside from the fact that the times could have saved a lot of money on consultants by just looking at my poll to inform their pricing strategy!)?

That a large majority of people will happily pay for content. We can intuit that they find value in the NYTimes content, and that they perceive there to be a difference between that content and other content they might find on the internet.

For those who are interested, the raw (and rather skimpy, but nonetheless valuable) data:

~alex