Major Dutch newspaper sets up paywall for their website

As the first major newspaper in the Netherlands, Financieele Dagblad (FD) sets up a paywall for their website. FD follows the example set by major foreign newspapers, including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Jacques Kuyf of FD Media Group believes their news is a quality product that should not be given away for free. In addition, he finds it important to actively respond to the digitization of the media. "There has long been a discussion about business models, but not much actually happens. Consumers have to get used to the idea that news of value has its price. We are convinced FD delivers enough quality to build a durable relationship with paying Internet users. " Paying readers will get unlimited access to fd.nl. Other visitors to the website can register and read ten articles per month for free.

FD currently has approximately one million unique visitors per month. By improving their news service, FD expects to catch some of them in a paid subscription. It is expected that the number of visitors will decrease significantly, but the downturn may stabilizing, because a certain group of readers will appreciate the news enough to pay for it. The paywall business model is based on this (smaller) group of regular readers that remains: They will now pay and generate income. FD expects this resource to produce more than the advertising revenue currently generated by the one million free riders.

Whether this will work on the long term remains to be seen. However, it is a fact is that the reliability of advertising revenue based on unique visitors is decreasing too. Through programs like Google Reader and RSS feeds, part of the readers no longer visit the site of the news source itself, while they do consume news.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kuyf expects the paper edition of FD will stay where it is: "Reader surveys show repeatedly that there is great satisfaction about the newspaper and the last quarter we have seen an increase in circulation."

Source: FD