Not sure what to make of this, but the Wall Street Journal is now offering annual Web subscriptions for $20 a year. Normally that subscription costs $100 per year and the WSJ was noted as the only newspaper in the business that could charge that much for Web-only content.
The WSJ may have reached a ceiling with business-type subscribers who could afford the price because their companies were footing the bill. But will those subscribers still be willing to shell out $100 per year? This seems like a pretty drastic change to their online business model.
When they announced the combination of online and print circulation numbers in 2005, the WSJ reported 764,000 online-only subscribers. Since then, they don’t appear to have broken down online and print circulation figures. Perhaps those online numbers aren’t as impressive as they once were.
