A very clever move by WSJ.com, who have introduced a way to eek more money out of subscribers.
It’s WSJ Professional Edition – and which professional cannot resist having their employer pay the $25 extra per month to get these extras:
Frankly those extras should be included with the WSJ subscription, and this is simply a way to price discriminate. But I confess an admiration for the way the upsell works. Included is a more powerful search feature, which covers multiple sources – some that are also subscription based.
a better company search..
and – well that’s about it. This is a new industry page, but really there is not much here that shouldn’t be here already.
The clever thing is that the WSJ is the business paper of record, and many readers will feel obliged to upgrade. It’s easy for those readers to spend their company’s money, but still totally optional so that readers like myself will not feel too left out.
So now there are 3 levels of price – free for a few articles, $155 for online only subscribers and an extra $300 per year to make $455 for Pro subscribers.
So – will other online media move to offer readers to Go Pro? Who knows – but the industry will watch eagerly.
I do think it is important that the WSJ is adding functionality without anything taking away from ordinary subscribers (I hope). It’s also good that the WSJ has something valuable to sell and readers that need no excuse to spend more money.
Lance Wiggs 