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Vipin V. Nair

With more Web sites opting for pay mode, are users switching loyalty? Or are they happy about paying for quality and dependable service?

WHEN Anisha Sodhi, an official with TWI, found in November that her favourite news portal had become a paid site, she did not switch loyalty.

Options of free sites were plenty and just a click away, but Sodhi paid Rs 499 for one year's subscription to the site, TheNewspaperToday.com.

"I was using it regularly since they were very fast with updating. After all, it was just Rs 499 for a year,'' she says.

Sodhi is one among those very few people in our country who are willing to pay for surfing Web sites, sending and receiving e-mails and e-greetings.

eWorld followed up with three sites who dared to go paid in 2001 — TheNewspaperToday.com, ArchiesOnline and 123India.com. Going by the response from these players, it seems Sodhi's tribe is growing, albeit slowly. People have started to accept that the Internet cannot afford to remain a world of freebies forever.

So would you pay for your e-mail? Six months ago, you would have uttered an emphatic `No' to this question, but surely you would think twice today. Recent media reports suggest that e-mail biggies such as Yahoo! and Hotmail too may go the paid way. From April 24, Yahoo!, the third largest e-mail system in the US after AOL and Hotmail, is charging users for automatically forwarding e-mails and some other features. If all popular e-mails go paid, you and I have no option but to pay up, since chances of a new, free e-mail service coming up as an alternative are rather dim in today's conditions.

One of the first e-mail services to go paid, 123India.com says it has attracted 12,000 subscribers. 123India.com started to charge its e-mail in June last by making the service a `premium' one. Users were asked to pay Rs 1,000 for a year. Before going paid, the portal had over a million e-mail users. Compared to this, a subscriber base of 12,000 may look pitiable, but mind you, these guys are paying. The others were not. "As much as 60 per cent (of the subscribers) are going in for renewal,'' Sanjiv Swarup, Senior Manager of 123India.com, says. "We are very happy with the response to our service.''

According to Kalli Purie, Chief Executive Officer of TheNewsPaperToday.com, the portal has been able to meet its subscriber targets for the first quarter. "We are in the process of initiating a motion to include TheNewspaperToday in the Audit Bureau of Circulation as a publication,'' Purie says, when asked about the number of subscribers to the portal.

Rajesh Menon, Business Head, Marketing, of Brandquiver, a consultancy for online advertising and brandbuilding, says that in view of the drop in online ad rates, it is a sensible move to go paid. "Ultimately somebody has to pay. Online ad rates have fallen by 30-40 per cent and you need to make money,'' Menon says. Agrees Youhan Darrab Aria, Chief Officer, Logistics and Finance of ArchiesOnline, "To create an e-card, we were spending about Rs 6,000. How long can one give them away for free?'' He says since becoming a paid site, ArchiesOnline has had over 10,000 users. Compared to previous statistics, it's again a massive fall in terms of hits and eyeballs for the site. But nobody is really bothered. "Our decision to go paid was vindicated by the fact that the world's leading e-greeting sites such as bluemountain.com and e-greetings.com have also started to charge users,'' Aria gushes. ArchiesOnline is hopeful of breaking even by the end of the 2002-03 financial year as acceptance of the site is growing.

However, a critical factor that would decide the prospects of these sites in the future is the tariffs that they charge.

People may have agreed to pay, but to what extent? "I would have hesitated if they were charging more than Rs 499,'' Sodhi says. Surely, users won't tolerate any increase in charges and this means these Web sites will have to continue their existing rates for a long time.

And also, when more and more sites start to charge users, a price war may break out, forcing the pioneers to lower their rates.

Nevertheless, no one is really bothered about all that and current efforts are to build the subscriber base.

Players such as TheNewspaperToday.com are launching major ad campaigns. Surely, the stage is set for the second part of the Net drama.

vipin@thehindu.co.in

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