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Ireland.com sets prices for access
Wednesday, May 01 2002
by Matthew Clark


Ireland.com's chief operating officer Mary Mangan has announced the company's new
prices for access to the paid sections of its Web site. 





At the National Digital Media Conference in UCD, partially sponsored by
Ireland.com, Mangan said the company would charge EUR79 per year for access to
the paid sections of the site. Monthly access will cost EUR14 and weekly access
will be EUR7. All prices are inclusive of VAT.



The on-line branch of the Irish Times newspaper announced earlier this year that
it would introduce a fee-based system for access to some of its content on-line,
including its archive. The move follows the firm's decision to introduce a
fee-based e-mail service as well. Although much of the site's content will now be
charged for, some information, including portions each day from The Irish Times
and its Breaking News service, are expected to remain free.



A variety of issues are thought to be driving the decision, including the Irish
Times' well-publicised cost cutting programme currently in progress. In December
Ireland.com announced that would cut around 23 jobs as the firm told workers that
the company needed to reduce its losses by EUR2.29 million for 2002 and that the
redundancies will cut those losses by EUR0.63million.



Other factors are also making the move to a paid model possible, including what
the company claims is a growing trend amongst content-driven Web sites all over
the world to move to paid services. In fact, the announcement from Ireland.com
comes on the day after the UK newspaper, the Financial Times, unveiled plans to
charge for its FT.com Web site. 



Like Ireland.com, FT.com was launched as a free service in the mid 1990s, but now
the newspaper will charge readers up to STG200 per year for its premium services.
The Times of London is also looking to charge readers for content later this
year, although its plan would see only readers outside the UK pay for access. 



Throughout cyberspace, publishers are facing increasing pressure to cut losses
from Internet ventures following the dot.com fallout as advertising revenues
alone have proven to be an insufficient sustenance to maintain big name Web
sites. However, as with print newspapers, advertising will continue to make up
large portions of the revenues for sites like FT.com, which says that
subscriptions will only account for 10 percent of its revenues this year. That
figure is not expected to go higher than 15 percent in 2003. 



However, other sites, such as the Wall Street Journal on-line, which has been
charging for its content for years but only has 640,000 subscribers compared to
FT's 2.7 million, pulled 60 percent of its revenues from subscriptions in 2001.