{"id":57,"date":"2012-02-05T01:26:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T19:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=57"},"modified":"2023-09-23T16:50:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T11:20:10","slug":"why-pay-for-content-when-you-can-get-it-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/05\/why-pay-for-content-when-you-can-get-it-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Pay For Content When You Can Get It For Free?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019d pointed out\u00a0in this blog post<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0a couple of years ago, just because micropayments support convenient ways to pay for digital content doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that people will pay for it. People will pay for content only if they can\u2019t get it for free easily and when they find enough value in it worth paying for.<\/p>\n

These are hardly pathbreaking insights into consumer behavior but it seems like Wall Street Journal doesn\u2019t get them.<\/p>\n

WSJ keeps sending me regular emails urging me to sign up for a paid subscription (see Figure 1).<\/p>\n

\n
\"wsjemail<\/a>
FIGURE 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

When you\u00a0click the link<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to an article on these emails, or on third-party newsletters and blog posts for that matter, you\u2019ll reach a\u00a0certain\u00a0page on the WSJ website<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0where you can read the first few lines of the article (see Figure 2).<\/p>\n

\n
\"fromblogtowsj<\/a>
FIGURE 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

If you wish to read beyond that, you\u2019ll be required to sign up for a paid subscription. At least, that\u2019s what WSJ would tell you.<\/p>\n

You really don\u2019t need to pull out your credit cards to sign up for a subscription to read the full article. Instead of clicking the \u201cTO CONTINUE READING, SUBSCRIBE NOW\u201d link at the bottom of the teaser page, simply Google for \u201cwsj\u201d followed by the title of the article \u2013 which you can copy and paste from where you first saw mention of the article \u2013 the very first search result (see Figure 3) will take you to\u00a0another page on the WSJ website<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0where you can get the full article for free (see Figure 4). Yes, it\u2019s really that simple, try it out!<\/p>\n

\n
\"googleserpwsjarticle<\/a>
FIGURE 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

When just a few more clicks will get me WSJ\u2019s content for free, there\u2019s a fat chance that I\u2019ll sign up for a WSJ paid subscription!<\/p>\n

\n
\"wsjfullarticle<\/a>
FIGURE 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Now, do these extra clicks pose more friction? No. Subscribers would anyway have to pass through the paywall logon screen where they\u2019d need to enter the username and password of their WSJ account before they can get hold of full articles. This step that only subscribers have to follow perhaps causes greater friction \u2013 sigh, yet another username and password to remember! –\u00a0than the extra clicks required to gain gratis access via Google Search.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing that this apparent anamoly exists because WSJ has likely permitted Google Search to trawl through its entire website, including pages that lie beyond the paywall, in order to juice up its SEO mojo. One unintended consequence of this is that the link for the full article shows up on the Google SERP (search engine results page). By clicking it, non-subscribers can directly get inside WSJ\u2019s walled garden that carries full articles without getting blocked by WSJ\u2019s paywall.<\/p>\n

Wall Street Journal might want to take note that\u00a0GigaOm Pro<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0San Francisco Business Times<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 two other paid content sites I checked \u2013 don\u2019t permit a similar free-of-cost backdoor entry into their walled gardens. I\u2019m sure there\u2019re many others. If readers are aware of other media websites where this hack works \u2013 and doesn\u2019t work \u2013 it\u2019d be great if they could let others know by leaving behind comments below this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019d pointed out\u00a0in this blog post\u00a0a couple of years ago, just because micropayments support convenient ways to pay for digital content doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that people will pay for it. People will pay for content only if they can\u2019t get it for free easily and when they find enough value in it worth paying … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-marketing","category-it-marketing","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11320,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/11320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}