NHPoliticalReport – the curtain closes, the door swings shut

At least, for those that aren’t willing to ante up.

NHPoliticalReport

When James Pindell first opened up NHPoliticalReport, he made it quite clear that it would be a "pay to play" site after an introductory time period. I traded emails with him asking about the economics of that, wondering if there would that many political junkies here in NH (and, perhaps, with the additional Presidential Primarians) that, after visiting a few times, would be willing to pay for content that was generally available for free (albeit, perhaps a bit slower and a bit more scattered)?

Probably like many, I was able to register and peruse the site for free since that time. What I saw was mostly Pressers (which he did seem to get a tad earlier than other sites), a few anecdotal stories from the campaign trails, tidbit news from around the state, and a couple of regular features (like Political Standing and Events At a Glance). That account was turned off middle of this past week (and yes, I did stop going to the site for a bit so it could have been sooner).

The thrust of my emails was this: I think he generally averaged about 5 posts a day (generally fairly short ones); was that sufficiently intriguing to the "p-junkies" to ante up:

New Hampshire politics in real time for around a dollar a day.

As he said, this was to be his livelihood – it had to pay. At about 5 posts a day, that’s about 20 cents – a bit high for micro-payment level. The wider history of pay walls (famously and lately, that of the NY Times) show that people are, in general, not willing to pony up even micropayments for opinion. Murdoch, the media conglomerate baron, has said that he will tell the search engines to not to index his sites – effectively walling them off from the wider ‘Web as well. Even with his billions, how long will / can that last?

I ran a quick spreadsheet:

Cost per day	$1
Cost per year	$365

	Needed #
Annual income	Subscribers

$80,000	219
$70,000	192
$60,000	164
$50,000	137
$40,000	110
$30,000	82
$20,000	55
$10,000	27
$5,000	14

Thus, I’m guessing that his "minimum sweet spot" has to be between 130 – 200 customers. Are there enough people around, for the content that he has delivered thus far, to determine that his content is of sufficient value to sign up? Maybe he can make a go of it (PolitickerNH died, even as a free site), but only time will tell. Very few sites have succeeded as subscription types – but those that have generally offer much more targeted content to a relatively wider audience.

I do wish him luck but only time will tell if this business decision will pan out.