If people don’t subscribe it’s no loss: Business Day chief
Business Day publisher and editor-in-chief, Peter Bruce says he doesn’t care how many people subscribe to the newspaper’s online edition, which went behind a paywall earlier this month (May).
Bruce was speaking on SummitTV’s Tech on Tap show. Summit is owned by the African Business Channel (ABC), the radio and TV wing of BDFM Media, publisher of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
Business Day is charging readers R14.50 a day for a digital and print edition of the business title, which translates to an annual (12 months) subscription fee of R5,292.
Paywall pioneer, The New York Times, bills per week, charging $3.75 for unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes smartphone app. That amounts to $15 dollars per month, and $180 annually – or R1,727, even with the rand taking its current beating against the greenback.
All Digital Access comes in at $8.75 per week, or $35 per month, and $420 annually (R4,029).
The New York Times Company recently announced that paid digital subscribers to The Times and The International Herald Tribune had grown to 676,000 by the end of March.
The Financial Times charges $8.59 per week, $34.36 per month, and $412.32 per year (R3,956) for its premium package.
The group also has a standard offer of $4.69 per week which provides full digital access, online, mobile and apps.
SA market
When posed with the question of whether the South African market was big enough to sustain a paywall model, Bruce said that Business Day’s online edition received two kinds of traffic, the in-and-out traffic through Google, and overseas readers which, account for 20%.
“These people aren’t consuming more than 15 stories per month. With our paywall, once you have registered you get those 15 stories for free,” Bruce said.
“Were designed to try to capture those people who want more out of the internet, and we will charge them a subscription for more than 15, otherwise we will see you again next month,” he said.
The editor-in-chief said that within the first week of going behind a paywall, BusinessDay has garnered “about 100 digital subscriptions” which he said was “way more than I imagined”.
He said that already amounted to over R200,000 in revenue the group would not have otherwise had.
What if?
Contemplating the possibility that people don’t subscribe to the digital version of Business Day, Bruce said: “That’s fine. Here’s the thing, let’s say no-one subscribes, it’s no loss to me whatsoever.”
“Basically it means nothing is for free, that’s all…that’s my bottom line. I don’t care how many people subscribe. It’s gratifying that so many have, but as long as I am not giving away content for free, I’m a happy man.”
He said that over the past 10 days or so, he’s found it difficult to find Business Day in his local Spar, an indication, he believes, that the paywall model is working.
More on Business Day and paywall
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Paywalls in SA inevitable: expert
Times Media confirms BDFM takeover
Afrikaans news websites go paywall
Koos Bekker wades into print vs online debate
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