In the past three months, I have talked to at least three agents of BusinessDay Newspaper on the phone, trying to sell the premium subscription of the newspaper to me.
And every time I hear, I am sososo from BusinessDay, no matter what I am doing at the time, I often give them a good minute or two responding to them respectfully, on how I love and enjoy their brilliant work, how I won’t mind subscribing to the premium option because it’s worth it but how unfortunately, at the moment, I can’t subscribe and what I think can be done to make it easy for me to buy their premium products.
BusinessDay Newspaper, like many other serious journalism outlets in Nigeria, does brilliant work that’s worth every penny they demand for their premium products because even what they offer free to all has significant worth in gold. But there is a popularly acknowledged problem in Nigeria that Nigerian readers don’t pay for media content, except, of course, the ₦250 – ₦300 newspapers some buy from the vendor at the bus stop. Some say Nigerian audiences feel entitled to free content, especially digital content and even if they have the money, they would not pay.
But is that totally true? I can say, for myself, and I bet there are many people like me, that this is an unfair generalisation of Nigerian readers.
For myself and people like me, not paying for premium media content is not totally the fault of the newspaper, or my fault either. Like a typical Nigerian, I will first blame it on the economy, or, to take more responsibility, blame it on my inability to earn more income to have the luxury of enjoying premium news content. But if I want to totally shirk responsibility, I can say it is the inability of the newspaper to sell to me at the point where I can buy. And this, I think, is the most realistic truth.
Before this year, when I got a limited trial of the BusinessDay Premium Subscription, I often told my colleagues and people around me that if I had the money, I wouldn’t mind paying for it. And by the time it ended, I become more hungry for it. I had once asked my editor if the company could get the subscription for us, and he said that if we put in the requisition, we could get it. I really considered putting it in, even though this would be a recurring expenditure for our department, and I know my MD to be someone who would always ask at the end of the month what every penny we spent yielded in naira returns for the company.
You can say I want this particular subscription because I am a journalist and it would give me more access to resources directly useful for my work, but I have always considered paying for content on other platforms, like The Republic, Stears, Communique (before they came back to being free), The Atlantic and many paid publications.
The reason why I said the inability of BusinessDay to sell to me at the point where I can buy is the reason why I haven’t been able to support their brilliant work, which I have also told a couple of their agents on our phone conversation is that for 98% of Nigerian, who earn downwards of ₦200k monthly having disposable income is an exception and not the norm, and even when they have it using to to subscribe to a media content would be last on their list. And the employers of these people also often hardly have extra funds to pay for these luxuries.
However, this same population will find a way to buy data subscriptions of an average of 10k and above to binge social media monthly, and once in a while treat themselves to out-of-budget meals, snacks and even a movie. They also give a sizeable percentage of those small earnings to charity, crowdfund, or even vote for their favourite reality TV housemate and gift the winner money.
What this shows to me is that there is a range of amounts considered negligible for a one-time feel-good treat by Nigerians, that can be used in place of the disposable income they don’t have for luxuries like a monthly newspaper subscription.
What if newspapers can key into this window of opportunity and sell their products in bits and sizes that can be paid for using this fund for one-time feel-good treats?
I, for one, as I told the BusinessDay agents, won’t mind paying a thousand or a couple once in a while to read a very insightful article. I might even be a generous and supportive friend to buy one of these articles for a friend that I know would benefit from it. And if it meets me at a time when I have this negligible fund to treat myself, I can buy a bundle of articles or pay for a couple of vouchers to be used on rainy days when I really need to read a good one.
My opinion is that trying to sell a monthly package with a lot of privileges and perks for a huge amount to Nigerians can be difficult because if I see a recurring commitment of about 15% of my monthly income, the thoughts of rent, transport, feeding and power dues alone will instantly delete it from my mind. But if it’s just a one-time small payment that I can always do at any time I have free money, I would not only consider it, but I would even explore it.
And like how I often return to buy data plans that is out of my budget, close my eyes to donate to a feel-good cause or treat myself to an ‘if I perish I perish’ Sharwama, I can always, more than once in a while, support the brilliant journalism that Nigerian journalists do with my money.
I know people will say there are similar initiatives like the buy a coffee for me, support accountability journalism or the journalist option being explored by many media outlets, but that often sounds like a foreign thing.
To sound, again, like a typical Nigerian, we have *” more sympathetic”* causes to support with the money that would give us more “feel-good” vibes. But when you make it transactional, it gives something else that Nigerians enjoy: “bragging rights”. I can boast to my friend that the last time I had extra cash on me, I bought some articles from BusinessDay Premium, and I still bought one more for my friend who is building his agritech startup.
When I started to think deeply about how this can work, I realised that the cost of building the infrastructure to make it possible to buy one article or a couple of choice articles as a bundle or to buy one to share is often not cheap. And it is already costly to even have the current paywalled publishing infrastructure, and it might be harder to add this new suggestion. But this is for the media business leaders to think about.