Thursday, July 11, 2002

Dow Jones & Company Announces Second Quarter Earnings: "Electronic publishing revenues decreased 2.1% in the second quarter to $78.6 million. Paid subscribers to The Wall Street Journal Online, the largest paid subscription news site on the web, continued to grow, reaching 646,000 as of June 30, 2002. Electronic publishing operating income, excluding special items, was $15.2 million in the second quarter, up 6.5% from a year earlier. Operating margins in the second quarter improved to 19.3% this year from 17.7% last year."

The WSJ Online is now big enough that churn is an important issue for them, and it's already good news to keep more or less the same number of subscribers. This could explain why just they raised (again) their prices. When Neil Budde explained his business during the Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content Summit[*], he had to endure a barrage of questions from the audience!

[*]Disclosure, this is an affiliate link to the event transcript, if you buy through it we get a commission (the event was great, and there's a money-back guarantee. Thanks for supporting TheEndOfFree!)