Bold Move by New York Times to Monetize Content

Hello Reader,

This morning I woke up to the news that the New York Times will soon be charging for content in 2011. That’s right, you read it right, the Guardian.co.uk reported: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/20/new-york-times-charging-content-online, that the New York Times will try to undertake, what I think is one of the boldest moves on the web in quite some time.

Now you might be asking, “hey, what’s so surprising about this news, we’ve heard talk concerning this idea for quite some time?”

Well what’s so surprising about this news is that The New York Times is considered one of the most influential news papers in the country, with only the Wall Street Journal coming in second. If there was someone who could pull off the idea of charging for content, it would be the New York Times. With the decline in newspaper sales and traditional print new sources going out of business, they may be the leader rescuing their failing business model and execute the famed idea of charging for content. You could have a load of other worthy news outlets soon follow and we could be seeing the next revolution on the web, or will we?

The biggest challenge they face is whether their readers will support their move or move on to reading free content on other sources like independent news papers and Blogs. Which brings up the next set of questions: If the New York Times is successful in charging for content, will this breed a whole new channel for Bloggers to monetize on their content via their readers? I don’t know, it seems like a farfetched idea, but is it really?

Of course all of this is just speculation and we really don’t know where this headed, but one thing is for sure, this news is definitely news worthy and the promise of what could happen should the New York Times succeed could change the internet, how content is monetized and our industry as a whole.

Tell your friends about us!

Emilio Yepez