Upselling your blog readers : Charging for premium content and services

I‘m hearing from more and more lawyers who want to sell access to premium content through their blog. Whether by pay for play on a piece by piece basis or by subscription, the lawyers are looking for residual income to supplement earnings from their legal practice.

I’m known as an ‘information yearns to be free’ guy across the net, but as I talk to more people who have had success selling access to content, I’m becoming more open to the idea. Especially when I visit with guys like Broc Romanek, a lawyer, who’s one of editors at TheCorporateCounsel.net. Understand Broc’s working with a company, with multiple people, and in a full time gig.

In the case of some of the lawyers, there’s some meat on the bone. They’ve been practicing law for years. They’re widely respected in their state or nationally in niche areas of the law. They have an appreciation of the type of content that should be freely available on a blog and that for which the premium value may warrant charging for. They have a broad following. And they’ve thought through the delivery mechanism for the premium content.

Other lawyers haven’t got to the second minute thinking through the idea. They have not a clue about web content, or for that matter how the Internet and blogs even work. They’re looking for a quick way to make money because they saw someone else do it. Lot’s of luck to you guys.

Pat Thornton, a new media journalist, Web developer, and publisher of The Journalism Iconoclast, sheds some light on the issue in his post ‘News organizations need to upsell users.’

The idea that news organizations should charge for basic content on the Web is repugnant.

It’s a losing proposition. It’s a terrible, terrible idea. And journalism is filled with terrible ideas right now.

But that doesn’t mean news organizations can’t charge for content. Far from it. Rather, news organizations need to create upsell features.

Pat shares a number of ideas, that though not directly applicable to lawyers, provide excellent food for thought as to what you need to be thinking of if you’re going to start charging.

• Content is one upsell area. ESPN Insider, for a paid subscription, offers scouting reports on every player, in-depth trend data for games, and AccuScore predictions on various aspects of upcoming games.
• Another could be business listings. For instance, a local site should offer every business and restaurant a free listing but also offer premium features for a price.
• Want to be able to upload coupons each week to our Web site? Premium feature. Want an in-depth, easily changeable menu for your restaurant? Premium feature. Want a blog to interact with your customers? Premium feature.
• Basic classifieds for individuals should be free, but we can still sell people on premium features. Want your listing to stand out with custom features, we’ll sell them to you.

I agree wholeheartedly with Pat, ‘If we’re going to ask people for money, we have to create value. Basic content isn’t that.’