Posted in Online Publishing Strategy	March 5, 2008

A year ago, free vs. paid was the big debate of the FIPP Digital Magazine Conference. This year, the battle is over: free wins

Mike Hewitt, the returning moderator for the second annual FIPP Digital Magazine Media Conference, looks a bit like a prize-fighter and has the feisty attitude to match. In an exclusive chat before the start of Day 3, Hewitt told Mequoda that the battle to decide if magazine websites would offer free or paid content was over.

Last year it was the topic of the conference. All the 2008 speakers, which included Mequoda's own Don Nicholas, seem to agree that 99 percent of magazine websites will use free content to drive up their online audience and make money selling a combination of premium priced brand advertising and lower cost pay-for-performance advertising.

Download our Online Publishing Secrets special report for FREE and learn the seven Internet marketing strategies that magazine and newsletter publishers are using to make money online

Even online publishers who sell their own magazine subscriptions, books, events and other products have grasped that having the biggest possible online audience in their niche is the key to online publishing success. Hewitt pointed out that pure-play websites, not magazine brands, hold the top spots in every special-interest niche. There was a time when special-interest magazines, their live events and their direct mail lists where the only cost-effective means to reach most special-interest markets - and magazine publishers dominated all three media.

The Web has changed that forever and less-than-a-decade old websites now dominate user media time in niche after niche. "The pure-plays have set the rules and we've got a lot of catching up to do," said Hewitt. As magazines wake to the challenge of building #1 websites in the niches they once owned, free online content has become one clear strategy for an industry struggling to reacquire the dominance they took for granted a little too long.

Learn more tips, tricks and strategies shared at the FIPP Digital Magazine Media Conference:

• Axel Springer to Double Online Magazine Revenue by 2009
  The german magazine giant reports 8% of magazine revenues were generated online in 2007 and promises shareholders 16% for 2009
  
  
• Distribution Key to Successful Online Publishing at IDG
  Patrick J. McGovern estimates that over the next 5-10 years, online revenue will pass print revenue in almost every one of the 85 countries he publishes in
  
  
• Two Magazine Publishers Sell Millions of Print Subscriptions Online in 2007
  Meredith and Hearst reveal their secrets for selling lots of print subscriptions online