Ask HN: Is the WSJ's "Pro Edition" a good business model?

3 points

16 years ago

The Wall Street Journal is charging extra for a "professional" subscription with access to premium features.

From TechCrunch:

"Dow Jones debuted a premium business news site dubbed The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition in an attempt to get companies to pay up $588 a year for access to more personalized, business-related news and analysis."

See: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/08/wall-street-journal-professional-edition

Does anyone know how well this "super-premium" business model is working for WSJ?

I keep seeing links to articles on WSJ.com marked up with the "Pro" tag, and it got me wondering whether or not this was a viable monetization strategy for other business-focused content sites.

For instance: why doesn't Google have a similar "Pro" edition of Google Finance? Is it because "freemium content" is a poor business model?

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