[ghero]

Besides the traditional digital subscription model, what about this kind of model (which just pop out of my head):

Give Washington Post (permanent) free digital subscription to all kindle users, however the catch to this deal is that it will come with tones of ADs embedded in the digital news paper. The user can hide those ADs or get an AD free version of it by paying a subscription fee. Also to encourage user to pay, there should be some extra contents/benefits that are exclusively to the payer.

I think this kind of model can make sense b/c:

1. It will help to sell more kindles, and makes kindles more competitive, since kindle buyers can now get high quality news papers for free now.

2. WaPo will get a huge boost in its AD revenue, as well as more international influence, since kindle will make WaPo a world wide popular news paper, and free subscription means each kindle will come with this.

3. As many pointed out, some people may still don't want to pay for the news, so this model might cover that concern.

4. The more ADs you embeded, the more AD revenue you gain, and more people will be willing to pay for an AD free version. However, there might be a limit that there is too much ADs that it begins to piss off the readers to drive them away.

I think in the long run, the success of WaPo in partner with kindle also requires an excellent localization strategy:

1. To be able to deliver local news (provincial/city/community news), on top of the international/national news.

2. To be able to deliver the news globally, and offers in different languages for diffferent language-speaking countries.

3. Get into the human resources market. Collect and post job oppertunities in readers' local region. This information is something you can charge them to pay. You can make this kind of information only avaliable to subscription payers.

4. Able to deliver regional specific ADs.

OK, thats all I can think for now.