Comments on: Monetizing Online Newspapers

By: Raj Mehta

Raj Mehta — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:08:02 +0000

Great post Eric. Completely agree with you.

The only thing I would add is the convenience factor. Yes, people can find content at other locations, provided they know what they are looking for. Otherwise, they are going to go back to the old trusted online or print newspaper. If nothing, then, for convenience.

So how do we make the online newspaper get something out of it? At ClikServ we have created a online payment platform that can be deployed by any news site very quickly at almost no cost. The best part is the paper can offer a few of their best articles for a price, and for a short while. So an article could be $0.25 until 6 pm, then out software makes it free.

The biggest problem we set out to solve is how to price that content? How about allow the market to dictate that? We are exactly offering that.

We’d love to hear thoughts around this.

raj

By: Long Island Press

Long Island Press — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:40:05 +0000

“Now, it’s pretty impressive for a free online paper, but it’s not knocking Newsday.com out of the water. The LIP is the 32,000th most popular US website, while Newsday.com is the 5,000th. Those things could change pretty quickly, but the LIP isn’t eating anyone’s breakfast.”

…you’d be surprised.

By: Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:20:53 +0000

There have been a few major newspapers that have followed this pattern in the last couple years. Their strategy has been to increase subscriber costs, but only high enough that their “core” readers will continue subscribing. These core readers are usually not that price-sensitive. Next, they’ve done more with their online newspapers–either charging for content (e.g., Wall Street Journal) or aggressively using ads.

It will be interesting to see how the newspaper landscape looks 10 years from now.