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> But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, To some small extent it amortizes across time, but in reality I i

by com2kid 11y ago

> But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, To some small extent it amortizes across time, but in reality I imagine the vast majority of benefits come from immediate usage. Interactive maps of data years old aren't that useful, such articles tend to create a lot of buzz when they are released but the benefit quickly fades away. is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? Technology isn't always cheaper. It'd be interesting to find out what the breakdown is here.

kbenson 11y ago
> is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? If I understand your point, that's specifically not an argument I'm making. I'm not saying online is more lucrative than print, but that the relative cost to profit probably makes it look good, because you don't have to do a media heavy article, you can still do it the same as print (but including relevant external video clips is easy enough at little to no extra effort). At that point the development cost is the same as for physical media, but the delivery cost is close to zero (not really, but so far below operating a printing and delivery pipeline that we can probably agree it's less than 5% of traditional delivery costs). My point is really "web delivery with subscriptions is fairly low cost, but also lower revenue. Any extra revenue we can get from this source will greatly affect the profit margin since a large chunk of the overhead has been removed." From that perspective, it looks really good, even if it's not currently delivering on the same level as their legacy operations.

by com2kid 11y ago

kbenson 11y ago

> is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? If I understand your point, that's specifically not an argument I'm making. I'm not saying online is more lucrative than print, but that the relative cost to profit probably makes it look good, because you don't have to do a media heavy article, you can still do it the same as print (but including relevant external video clips is easy enough at little to no extra effort). At that point the development cost is the same as for physical media, but the delivery cost is close to zero (not really, but so far below operating a printing and delivery pipeline that we can probably agree it's less than 5% of traditional delivery costs). My point is really "web delivery with subscriptions is fairly low cost, but also lower revenue. Any extra revenue we can get from this source will greatly affect the profit margin since a large chunk of the overhead has been removed." From that perspective, it looks really good, even if it's not currently delivering on the same level as their legacy operations.