Can newspapers which have spent years giving away their content free online now start charging for it? The Financial Times has seen a 43% rise over the last year in the number of people subscribing to its online service. There are now 126,000 subscribers paying a minimum of £180 a year. Anonymous visitors to the site can just see headlines and read one article per month, those who register but don't pay are allowed 10 articles a month, and then there are the paying customers who get everything, including an iPhone app.
What's interesting is that the middle group, those who register but don't pay, are still proving lucrative because they have given some very basic information such as their job title and that's enough to allow the FT to run a targeted advertising and marketing operation with high yields.
Read more at the BBC.
