The Independent is a newspaper here in the U.K. which is in many ways progressive. Its front page design is often quite original and it was the first British newspaper to change its “broadsheet” format to a smaller size, which resulted in a spike in its sales.

For a newspaper that seems unafraid of taking risks and challenging the norm, it’s a shame that they’re not more progressive when in comes to pricing their online content.

The newspaper equivalent of reading a blog is following what a columnist has to say. For a Simon Carr enthusiast who does most of his reading online for example, there are three options:

1. Subscribe for a year for £50,
2. Subscribe for a month for £10 or,
3. buy a single column for £1.

Mr. Carr writes roughly 20 columns a month, which comes to a total of 240 columns a year. The cheapest subscription option for this column is £50 pounds for 240 columns or about 20 pence a pop. In the newsstand The Independent costs 60 pence.

Embracing micropayments is not something the Independent should do because it is progressive or inventive. They should do it because it is the only way a traditional media company, that bases its revenue on written content, can survive.

The Independent is not about to remove its paper from the newsstand and force those who want to read it to subscribe. Why are they doing it online?

The availability and feasibility of micropayments is another matter. Jakob Nielsen advocated for them as early as 1998 but they still haven’t materialized fully.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Business, Pricing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.