(Alexander Russo, in This Week in Education, posted a short entry describing our pricing structure last week. Stefanie Hemmingson, Education Week‘s director of audience development , details below our web site pricing structure and its reasons.)
As many of you may know, nearly a year ago edweek.org—home of Education Week, Teacher Magazine, the EPE Research Center, and Agent K-12—made the decision to begin charging a subscription fee for premium content.
Why did we do it? Well, the hard truth is that while we are a non-profit, we support ourselves with subscription revenue. And the edweek.org site was just a little too good—rich with news, information, research and analysis—and we found our paying print subscribers were leaving because they could get what they needed for free. We offer free registration and paid, premium access, so that we can maintain our paid subscription revenue, while also fulfilling our mission to provide up-to-the-minute, accurate reporting on the latest developments in K-12 education.
Edweek.org visitors have several ways to access the site, depending on their needs. First, they can register. This is FREE, and provides limited access to edweek.org. Visitors who register can view the headlines on the edweek.org homepage and read any two complete articles of their choice each week. They can also read unlimited articles on teachermagazine.org, participate in chats, review and download statistics from the Research Center, check out all of the jobs on Agent K-12, and receive any of our informative newsletters.
The registration tier gives users a great amount of access, but it is limited. So for the more “casual user,” this is a great option. Believe me, we have nearly ¾ of a million of these folks who are getting exactly what they want out of edweek.org at absolutely no cost.
For educators who need more information more frequently, there is paid, Premium Access. Whether these subscribers choose Online Only (monthly or annually) or Print Plus Online, they get unlimited access to edweek.org, plus a Daily News feature, to keep these subscribers truly up-to-date. They also get access to 25 years of Education Week archives. This feature is especially helpful for researchers and policymakers.
Subscribers to Print Plus Online obviously get both premium access to edweek.org along with Education Week in print (and at only $10 more to include print, it’s a great deal :-). All of these paid subscribers are the “power users” of news and information on K-12 education.
So almost a year after changing from a free site to a tiered subscription site, we have learned that we can continue to provide the quality K-12 education reporting we are known for, keeping tens of thousands of educators, administrators, and others informed on the issues on a daily basis at absolutely no cost. At the same time, we can provide a deep well of information and unlimited access to power users who are willing to subscribe to edweek.org.
Stefanie Hemmingson
Director of Audience Development