Some things happen online at a dizzying speed and, unless you have the advantage of being the “first-mover”, it will cost you a lot to catch up.
However, other things happen quite slowly.
One of these slowly emerging trends is people’s willingness to pay for content online. At the beginning, when companies tried to charge for their content, they were met with the predictable cry of, “Information wants to be free!”
That’s changing now. According to an article at MediaPost, spending on online content reached $2 Billion dollars in 2005, a 15% increase on the year before.
Here are a few interesting figures from that study.
– 78% of the money was spent in the form of subscriptions.
– The lion’s share of the money was spent on lifestyle, entertainment and online personals and dating.
– However, there was also an increase in spending on content related to investment and business.
Whichever market is relevant to your own business, the growth in spending has been rising steadily year by year. This presents opportunities for companies which have so far made all of their content available for free.
You’ll find some interesting data on pricing content in our Price Testing brief. You’ll also find information on increasing sign-up conversion rates in our Subscription Pathway Optimization brief.
