100 Million People In The US Are Ready To Pay For Online Content
Nov 16th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Corporate Podcasts, Making Money with Podcasts 
ReadWriteWeb has posted a surprisingly pessimistic look at recent stats on how many people in the US are willing to pay for access to online news: 80% of US Consumers Won’t Pay For Online News.
They cite two sources on this:
- According to a new Forrester Survey, 80% say they wouldn’t bother to access newspaper and magazine content online if it were no longer free.
- According to the Boston Consulting Group, cited in the New York Times, 48% of all Internet users would be willing to pay for the news that they read online.
RRW’s angle on this is surprisingly pessimistic because 20%-48% of US Internet users say they would pay to access news content online. That’s 100 million people or more.
Compare that to the percentage of people that are willing to pay to read a traditional newspaper. The New York Times, for example, has a daily circulation of 928,000, in a city of 8,363,710. That’s only about 11%.
Internet users are 2 to 4 times as willing to pay for online news as New Yorkers are to pay for one of the best newspapers in the world.
What do you think? Is the cup half empty for paid Internet media or half full?
I would have liked to have seen how many people actually read newspapers online NOW. I mean, if 25% of people read newspapers online, then 80% of them are willing to pay for it. That is significant.
The few newspapers I read online I do so because Google News directs me to them and I find their articles interesting. If they started charging for content I'd stop reading them because there will always be alternatives and, frankly, the articles aren't worth the paper they're not even printed on any more.
I would have liked to have seen how many people actually read newspapers online NOW. I mean, if 25% of people read newspapers online, then 80% of them are willing to pay for it. That is significant.
The few newspapers I read online I do so because Google News directs me to them and I find their articles interesting. If they started charging for content I'd stop reading them because there will always be alternatives and, frankly, the articles aren't worth the paper they're not even printed on any more.
I would have liked to have seen how many people actually read newspapers online NOW. I mean, if 25% of people read newspapers online, then 80% of them are willing to pay for it. That is significant.
The few newspapers I read online I do so because Google News directs me to them and I find their articles interesting. If they started charging for content I'd stop reading them because there will always be alternatives and, frankly, the articles aren't worth the paper they're not even printed on any more.