The FT's Web strategy pays off

Eric Pfanner of the New York Times writes Sunday about the Web pay strategy of The Financial Times, which has historically been to charge for access.

Pfanner writes, “The FT’s Web site has not attracted a huge paying audience. It stands at about 117,000 worldwide, up from 101,000 when the newspaper adopted a new Web business model in late 2007. That is far short of the one million paying customers of The Journal’s Web site.

“Yet FT.com is lucrative because of its relatively high cost. A premium subscription to the Web site, with access to all content, costs $299 a year in the United States. Adding the print version of the paper costs $100 more. A combined print and online subscription to The Wall Street Journal costs $140.

“Because of rate increases by FT.com, revenue from Web subscriptions has risen 30 percent over the past year, Mr. Ridding said. The FT has also raised the price of its print editions.”

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