Financial Times Online is exploring to launch high-priced specialty newsletters, priced up to 1,000 to 15,000 pounds a year, “depending on the level of depth of information”. This was disclosed by Zach Leonard, COO of FT.com, speaking at the Interactive Media conference in London on Wednesday. These specialist newsletters will strike at the heart of the trade industry, and will rival the “verticals strategy” being pursued in earnest by its stateside rival WSJ.com. “If we do something really robust that’s written especially for the Web, from the desk of Martin Wolf [who is the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times], and you couple that with lots and lots of archived material, you can charge for things like that. That is not outside the realm of possibility.” Target audience: investment banks.

On a related note, FT.com has reached 55,000 subscriber mark this week, and is about to celebrate its one-year anniversary of turning subscription, in a week. Recently, the company merged all its different network of websites into the single parent FT.com, and that meant a change in design and data collection process. The site, which has a Europe, U.S. and Asian edition online, separately, has made each regions responsible for their own revenues, with a specific subscriber target for each of those regions.

The company is also exploring offering a per article micropayments option, especially in the U.S.

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