Online Financial Times readers increasing, fast!

Written on 29th July 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent

Picture by Kenny Mathieson (CC)

Its not a question whether newspapers are depended of their online services anymore. It seems that newspapers are making the switch to digital, and that income can be found in advertisements rather then subscription based income. An example is English business paper Financial Times, that recently reached an important tipping point – The newspaper currently have more online then printed readers.

According to Financial Times owner Pearson the daily circulation of the business newspaper has been 350.000 readers for a long time now, but the site ’s online visitors have tripled to half-a-million in just one year.

The increase in online users is the result of a successful digital strategy of the media company; the news company introduced a policy that enforces the frequent readers, that read more then five articles to subscribe to the site. Income from online visitors is generated with advertisements. The digital subscriptions and online advertisement counted for 20% eight years ago but increased to 63% of turnover this year.

I read the Financial Times almost everyday, and I really like to read the paper on my way to work, like many others I actually like to read from paper. But I guess that the Kindle, iPhone and other E-paper gizmo’s will be making digital newspaper reading more convenient in the future. You’ll never know, soon you might be asked: “Mommy/Daddy, can you tell me again about the time when you were reading printed newspapers?”