Wall Street Journal to sell individual issues via iPad

According to paidContent, the Washington Journal will begin selling individual issues of its paper for $1.99 per issue. This’ll be done through its current application.

If an iPad user opts to download a single issue, they’ll only be getting what was available in that day’s print edition. They won’t get the ‘Now’ edition of the paper, which includes regular updates to the daily edition.

Current subscribers can login and still get full access, same as before. If Apple gets the user to subscribe entirely through the Wall Street Journal application then Apple will take their 30% cut. The Wall Street Journal does offer a digital only subscription for roughly $17 a month, which is much cheaper than receiving the full suite of Wall Street Journal items, including the paper edition.

The method that the Wall Street Journal has implemented is providing a digital-only subscription. This method is cheaper, and may retain more customers because there are some customers who do not wish to hassle with needlessly disposing of a physical copy when they only wish to subscribe to the digital edition.

This method of enticing and retaining customers differs significantly from the New York Times, who is charging more for a digital-only subscription than the physical subscription. There are those who are willing to pay for the news that they want; however, there are also those who refuse to pay for news at all. I guess you can’t win them all over.

Article Via Mashable

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