Historically, WSJ.com has relied on a subscription model to generate revenue, a tribute to it’s print roots. A site visitors couldn’t access Wall Street Journal content unless he or she was a paying subscriber.

NYTimes.com dabbled with this model, with Times Select, before deciding to open the site up completely so that search engines can index content and bloggers can link directly to articles. The rationale, after some financial analysis, was that the incremental site traffic will prove to be more profitable than trying to grow a subscriber base. Making content free and searchable drives page views, a metric that is understood by advertisers, who are moving more of their budgets online.

With their relaunch in September, WSJ.com seems to be striking a balance between the slow growth and dependable revenue of a subscription model, and the fast growth but recession prone ad-supported model.

Deep Thoughts on Content Business Models
As almost all online media companies are starting to rely exclusively on advertising only business models, it’s nice to see a company try to push a two pronged content model – advertising and subscription. We should all be cheering WSJ.com on. If they add pay-per-view they would have the trifecta. And if they syndicate their content to other properties, that would be the holy grail.

There is going to be a time in the next few years when online ad spending by brands reflects the proportionate time their target audience spends on different mediums – tv, print, mobile, web, events. So if, for example, consumers are spending 30% of their time online, advertiser budgets will reflect this.

Currently, they are not even close, so there is lots of room for growth. As advertisers move more of their budgets online, there is plenty of advertising growth revenue to go around. However, once we reach equilibrium, media companies will be fighting for a relatively fixed pie of online advertising dollars.

At that point in time, I believe that many media companies will say to themselves, “wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t entirely dependent on Ad revenue?” Subscription revenue would, like a diversified stock portfolio, mitigate risk, especially during the next economic downturn, a time when ad budgets, including online ad budgets, will be among the first expense line items that get pulled.

So while subscription models are going the way of the dodo bird, I do think there will be a day of reckoning once advertisers reach equilibrium between online and offline. Web sites today are relying on the growth provided by a transition to online by advertisers, not growth in advertising. At some point the transition growth will be over.

6 years ago, in a time we can affectionately call Before Google (BG), the Wall Street Journal web site started as a closed environment. This made sense. They had a premiere print product and the online version was viewed as an extension of the print publication. Subscribers could access business and financial news content. Non-subscribers got a taste of the caliber of content, just enough to drive them to potentially subscribe.

However, as more and more competitors are popping up to provide financial and business news and analysis, search engines are indexing everything in site, and advertisers want more and more eyeballs, WSJ.com finally revisited its subscription-heavy model after 6 years.

Giving non-subscribers access to more content is one of the biggest changes.

WSJ.com online audience is up 200% in last two years, according to Gordon McLeod, President of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Subscribers are coming more often and consuming more pages. WSJ.com is also seeing growth in non-subscribers finding content via search engines or links from other sites. The additional eyeballs is leading to an increase in subscriptions, up 26% in the past two years.

The goal of the September re-launch was to make changes that would support this growth trend in visitors finding WSJ from other sites and subsequently becoming subcribers.

Most of free content on the WSJ.com site is in the lifestyle and video sections. WSJ is putting more resources into both areas to help drive traffic to the site to drive both advertising revenue growth and new subscriptions.

Rarely do people start, or even visit, the site home page. It’s estimated that 60% of WSJ.com readers never see the home page because they click onto the site from other sites that may be referencing a story or has embedded a video, or from a google search.

WSJ produced their first video for the site two years ago. WSJ.com rebuilt the video player, which sits on top of the Brightcove Flash video platform, to go along with the site re-launch in September and now produces 200 original video pieces per week. As users are more engaged with online video, advertisers are coming to the party. Inventory in online video is sold out, so the WSJ.com actually cannot meet demand. Advertisers want to see more inventory. WSJ.com produces business of life pieces (travel, wine, luxury) that attract B2C advertisers to go along with the B2B advertisers who sponsor financial and business programming.

WSJ doesn’t rely on social media tools to enable users to create content. WSJ pays 2,000 journalists to cover the news and will continue to do so. McLeod does hope that social media tools will enable users to connect with each other and comment on stories, but doesn’t foresee using it as a tool to generate news.

News Corp wants to make Dow Jones “one-stop shop” for media buyers and is backing it up with investment in both the print and digital offerings.