communitynews - 9:55 pm on Mar 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

The well known bad news within the newspaper industry is that today, in general, publishers should only expect to get somewhere around 1% to 4% of their paid print circulation in online subscribers.

The not so well known good news is that those that subscribe to online versions of newspapers are not that consirned about price. Many publisher try low prices to increase their online subscribers but that won't help increase the numbers much if at all.

We recommend that our newspaper publishers charge their "out-of-town" rate for the print edition for the online edition and 25% more than the print edition for a combo of print and online. We even recommend that free newspapers charge for the online edition.

We find that locals are willing to pay the out-of-town rate, we believe, because they just want their news online and that's all that counts.

Several people have mentioned in this thread that news websites that provide national and/or international news that is readily available available elsewhere shouldn't expect much luck with online subscriptions. We believe this is very true. Those with unique content will have the most success.