Only paywalls for 'special content'

Newspaper publishers are better off not to hide their daily newspaper articles behind a paywall, but rather use their ‘regular’ articles to attract readers who are willing to pay for special content. This is one of the conclusions of a study (PDF, Dutch) by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on behalf of the The Netherlands Press Fund (Stimuleringsfonds voor de Pers).

According to the survey, readers with an "above-average willingness to pay for digital content" are:

• public transport travellers,
• young adults,
• smartphone users;
• people with high educations,
• people with an income above average and
• subscribers to newspapers.

The best way to get readers to pay for additional content is to provide the usually more general news articles with links to all kinds of more customized news, opinion articles and unique information. Especially digital products offer possibilities to link to other online content.

Readers would also be willing to pay for more personally tailored news. This should especially be true for regional news, but also for background, sports and entertainment news.

The British Sunday Times newspaper recently lost a significant part of its online readership due to a new, mandatory payment structure for its previously free online newspaper articles.   

Source: Media Facts (Dutch)