Online Journal Revenue Set To Increase

Rupert Murdoch said yesterday that online subscription revenue at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones could increase by $300 million a year up to the next three years.

The News Corp Chief Executive was speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia press conference in New York said he dropped his plan to make the WSJ.com a free and open site after seeing the revenue projections.

Rupert Murdoch

"When I looked at the figures and saw what could be done, I changed my mind totally," Murdoch said. The Journal’s Web site could also bring in more than $100 million a year in annual advertising revenue and maybe a "couple hundred million more" in the future, Murdoch said.

On Tuesday,WSJ.com introduced a redesign that offered more social networking features and better navigation. Gordon McLeod, president of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network described the reason for the redesign.

"Our WSJ.com redesign objective was clear — provide our users with a comprehensive experience that grants access to news and information on their terms while providing a unique platform for advertisers to reach our highly affluent and influential digital audience,"

Murdoch also said that News Corp’s MySpace is bringing in more than $500,000 for a day of advertising on the site. Sometimes he said MySpace could get up to $1 million a day in ads.