Tech in Asia recently published an article on ecommerce leaders in the region. It was largely sourced from a report by iPrice and AppAnnie.

Since it was one of their “premium” articles it was paywalled, even though the original article is free.

What’s more interesting though is TIA’s pricing. TIA values a single premium article at $8.90

Here’s how that compares to some other published work you could pay for.

NYT Subscription - $1 per week.

So, one TIA article is equivalent to having full New York Times for two months.

Code Complete - $30-$40

TIA values one article to about 25% - 33% of the value of Code Complete, one of the most highly rated software construction books.

Only the Paranoid Survive - $9.50 on sale

TIA article is valued at about part to Only the Paranoid Survive.

The Hobbit - $10 - $15

The Hobbit is only slightly more valuable than the article.

Surely you can’t be serious

And surely they can’t be. It’s almost definitely an attempt to showcase how good the value of the subscription is but to me a questionable one. Pricing strategies have their place, but they have to make some sense at least.

Here are some suggestions that make more sense, at least to me:

• NYT has a few preview articles per month, following which the subscription is $1 per week
• The Guardian turned profitable by scrapping the paywall and only soliticing donations
• A $1.99 “day pass” for non-subscribers
• A $0.99 per article

All of these make more sense than charging the equivalent of book for content that’s available by Googling the first sentence.