5 ms·

After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday's Web Site

130 points by icey 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
It looks like newsday has other issues (pun not intended) besides a very lousy conversion rate. If they make it to next year without going bust or being sold again it would highly surprise me. Their only saving grace is that they actually provided the figure. I can't make the numbers work though, 35 subscribers for $20 / month since october works out to 140*$20 maximum, which is a lot less than the $9000 quoted in the article.
- gr366 17y ago
  Oops, deleted my similar comment I submitted simultaneously. But yes, that $9000 figure is lazy math. It would be $9100 for a full year of 35 subscribers. Considerably less for 3 months (like $2100), and that's assuming all 35 subscribers signed up on day one.
- pohl 17y ago
  The article did phrase it as an approximation ("With those 35 people, they've grossed about $9,000."). If 35 people sign up to pay $260 per year, that's $9100.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    If they signed up per year, yes. But their subscription terms are '$5 per week'. So, unless I'm completely uninformed about consumer law, that means they have to do recurring billing on a weekly schedule charging $5 each time the subscription renews, and customers can cancel at any one point in time. See here: http://www.newsday.com/services/7.387?registration=true&online=true http://www.newsday.com/services/7.387?registration=true&... Any two bit webmaster running a site with a subscription model would be able to tell you some of the downsides of that registration page and why you really don't want to do this (the $5 / week charge) but that's their problem. So, what they've grossed is the number of subscribers times the number of weeks, once they've figured out their 'life cycle' they can project to future earnings. People do not as a rule fork over a years subscription in advance, another truth of online recurring billing. That's a great way to have to refund all of the money if the customer is not 100% satisfied during the run of the subscription. So, the 'middle ground' is monthly billing, with in case of a dispute a maximum 3 month refund. I also love their 'opt-out' for spam checkbox (check to opt-out, default 'unchecked'), and the fact that they (optionally) ask you to fill out your gender and birth date. > " Please check this box if you prefer not to be emailed " The marketing joys of double negatives.
    - pohl 17y ago
      Apparently those 35 people did sign up for a year. (Edit: I guess not. I think the author is just establishing a best-case calculation). According to the article, anyway, which unveils the number 35 as the answer to the following question: "...how many people have signed up to pay...$260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?"
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        /me thinks that they made the connection between the $5 per week and the year all by themselves, the website is mum on $260, but prominently displays the $5. That's the one thing they did right, if they had put $260 up front you'd be looking at 3 in stead of 35 subscribers :)
        pohl 17y ago
        No doubt the author made the connection himself. It's sensible for him to have calculated the best-case since the gist of the piece is that even the best-case annual revenue is abysmal.
    - gridspy 17y ago
      It would be interesting to know the conversion rate of that hideous page.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        I highly doubt they would even understand the question if you asked them. That page is just about against every bit of best practice regarding sign up forms that I'm aware of. - don't ask for stuff you don't need - make it *one* step to register and pay - ask positive questions not negative questions - put the form at the top and the benefits to the right the form is where you make your sale, so it should come first - make it a light page with black lettering - make it a secure server - if you will be using an email address as a login (bad) then you don't need to ask for a username - do not split your billing step and the signup step And so on...
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jswinghammer 17y ago
I think they probably captured everyone that makes reading Newday's website a regular part of their day. I can't imagine ever doing that personally but I guess it's possible. I hope that they just refund those people their money and move on and try something else.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > and move on and try something else. Like what ? This is their hail-Mary pass, if the subscription model does not work what are they supposed to do next? If this is an example of what will happen when paywalls rise on 'old media' sites then they're dead in the water.
  - prawn 17y ago
    If I were a local paper/news-source, I'd try offering business subscriptions to SMEs that included online access for employees, coverage/feature/advertorial for products and services, and a general online advertising component. Right now, the advertising presented on local news sites in Australia seems to be a mixture of random AdWords junk and larger-budget stuff (big auto sites, etc) but not much in the way of really localised small-business advertising. With more information on readers (down to postcode and age-group), I think they could definitely do more to sell small businesses on online advertising; I'm talking about butchers, school enrolments, tradespeople, restaurants, etc. The concept I mentioned would both collect info on readers and bring small businesses into the newspaper's community.
  - Zev 17y ago
    This is their hail-Mary pass, if the subscription model does not work what are they supposed to do next? Put someone competent in charge of the paper and removing quality articles and placing ads in the paper instead. Also, go back to a format that resembles a newspaper that has news in it, rather then tabloid newspapers. I used to read Newsday on a daily basis. It took approximately a month under the Dolans (current owners) for my subscription to be canceled due to the reasons above. If the problems were fixed, I'd gladly go back to reading Newsday instead of switching between the Times and the Daily News. Because currently, this isn't a story of a newspaper dying. Its a story of the tabloids dying. And good riddance; perez hilton and the ilk don't need syndication.
forgotAgain 17y ago
As a resident locally "served" by Newsday I can only ask: what were those 35 people thinking! Comparing Newsday to the NY Times does a disservice to the Times. Since being taken over by Cablevision, Newsday can best be described as the New York Knicks of media. It has become a throwaway add-on for Cablevision in its competition with Verizon Fios.
- joshwa 17y ago
  In Newsday's geographic target area (Long Island, NY), if a news consumer is the type of reader who mainly reads news online, they'll go with the Times, or even the NY Post or Daily News online, rather than Newsday. Newsday's print readers (even before the Cablevision takeover) are the readers most likely to be still consuming print -- they skew older, less affluent, and less educated. Newsday's only competitive advantage content-wise, relative to the other NY papers, are hyper-local Long Island politics, culture listings, and classifieds. There just isn't any overlap between people interested in these things and people who consume most of their news online (AND are willing to pay for it).
nfnaaron 17y ago
"35 people." I wonder how big the Newsday executive suite is?
noodle 17y ago
the headline is a bit misleading. that is 35 paid online subscriptions from people who don't already have a print subscription (who get online access for free), and/or who don't already have a cablevision account (who get a free account). i'd be interested in knowing the number of people who are new subs for the print version in that same timeframe, and/or new subs from the cable deal.
- seldo 17y ago
  Even with all the free/bundled subscriptions, they admit that traffic is way down: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsday.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsday.com/ The paywall actually only went up at the end of 10/2009, but even so it's clear that audience loss accelerated, something like a 25% loss in November.
- krobertson 17y ago
  Agreed. The article is almost pointless. The online edition was meant to be a freebie, while the title makes it sound like the business is failing because of the web version. Granted, sounds like they're struggling as a whole and wasted a good chunk of cash on the site. But they couldn't have any had any serious exceptions if 75% of their market was going to get it for free.
andre 17y ago
Take into account that traffic fell from 2.2 Million to 1.5 Million unique users in the 3 months that that paywall has been up. So out of the 700,000 uniques that stopped reading, they only converted 35 to paying.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
adamt 17y ago
"The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million" I didn't realise people still spent $4M on what is basically a CMS. They could have bought a news focus and proven CMS like Ellington for less than a fraction of a percent of that. Leaving plenty of change to play for design.
kcway95 17y ago
Print pub management is never going to be able to figure out this web thing. Their egos are too big and they are totally incapable of dragging themselves away from the "Ad Block" business model. They are never going to be able to see readers as anything but numbers that they deliver to advertisers. I think the whole business will be pretty much gone by 2020 and, in my opinion, all I can say is "Good Riddance".
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Summary: if you horribly mismanage a newspaper, you will lose readers.
Yaa101 17y ago
35 pairs of eyeballs makes me think that they will not make fantastic advertisement deals, I think they are doomed when keeping the paywalls up
tcarnell 17y ago
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=newsday.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://trends.google.com/websites?q=newsday.com&geo=all&...
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
eli 17y ago
5$ a week seems very expensive. Surely they weren't making that much per print subscriber
chris123 17y ago
Maybe there's never a "good" time to put up a pay wall, but it seems pretty dumb or naive to try to do it now, while so many people are still eliminating recurring expenses and generally trying to save money. If money is tight, switching to a free alternative when one of the sites you hit online puts up a pay wall seems like a no-brainer. Reminds me of "the penny gap" (see http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html). This is especially true with discretionary items and items that have many competitors and substitutes, especially free ones. That's the situation with newspapers. Sure, some might say each newspaper and writer is unique, which is true, but... ...maybe people aren't looking for "the best" newspaper or writer or web app, maybe they're looking for "the best free" newspaper, writer, or web app. NOTE: "Free" in this case means "ad supported," or at least "no subscription required."
parka 17y ago
There are so many Internet business models but why is it that the subscription model is the only one they can think of. Newspaper industry clearly needs a new business model. But the bigger problem is really the management who are incapable of coming up with one, or incapable of executing. This is really a people problem.

130 points by icey 17y ago

It looks like newsday has other issues (pun not intended) besides a very lousy conversion rate. If they make it to next year without going bust or being sold again it would highly surprise me. Their only saving grace is that they actually provided the figure. I can't make the numbers work though, 35 subscribers for $20 / month since october works out to 140*$20 maximum, which is a lot less than the $9000 quoted in the article.

gr366 17y ago
Oops, deleted my similar comment I submitted simultaneously. But yes, that $9000 figure is lazy math. It would be $9100 for a full year of 35 subscribers. Considerably less for 3 months (like $2100), and that's assuming all 35 subscribers signed up on day one.
pohl 17y ago
The article did phrase it as an approximation ("With those 35 people, they've grossed about $9,000."). If 35 people sign up to pay $260 per year, that's $9100.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  If they signed up per year, yes. But their subscription terms are '$5 per week'. So, unless I'm completely uninformed about consumer law, that means they have to do recurring billing on a weekly schedule charging $5 each time the subscription renews, and customers can cancel at any one point in time. See here: http://www.newsday.com/services/7.387?registration=true&online=true http://www.newsday.com/services/7.387?registration=true&... Any two bit webmaster running a site with a subscription model would be able to tell you some of the downsides of that registration page and why you really don't want to do this (the $5 / week charge) but that's their problem. So, what they've grossed is the number of subscribers times the number of weeks, once they've figured out their 'life cycle' they can project to future earnings. People do not as a rule fork over a years subscription in advance, another truth of online recurring billing. That's a great way to have to refund all of the money if the customer is not 100% satisfied during the run of the subscription. So, the 'middle ground' is monthly billing, with in case of a dispute a maximum 3 month refund. I also love their 'opt-out' for spam checkbox (check to opt-out, default 'unchecked'), and the fact that they (optionally) ask you to fill out your gender and birth date. > " Please check this box if you prefer not to be emailed " The marketing joys of double negatives.
  - pohl 17y ago
    Apparently those 35 people did sign up for a year. (Edit: I guess not. I think the author is just establishing a best-case calculation). According to the article, anyway, which unveils the number 35 as the answer to the following question: "...how many people have signed up to pay...$260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?"
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      /me thinks that they made the connection between the $5 per week and the year all by themselves, the website is mum on $260, but prominently displays the $5. That's the one thing they did right, if they had put $260 up front you'd be looking at 3 in stead of 35 subscribers :)
      - pohl 17y ago
        No doubt the author made the connection himself. It's sensible for him to have calculated the best-case since the gist of the piece is that even the best-case annual revenue is abysmal.
  - gridspy 17y ago
    It would be interesting to know the conversion rate of that hideous page.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      I highly doubt they would even understand the question if you asked them. That page is just about against every bit of best practice regarding sign up forms that I'm aware of. - don't ask for stuff you don't need - make it *one* step to register and pay - ask positive questions not negative questions - put the form at the top and the benefits to the right the form is where you make your sale, so it should come first - make it a light page with black lettering - make it a secure server - if you will be using an email address as a login (bad) then you don't need to ask for a username - do not split your billing step and the signup step And so on...

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jswinghammer 17y ago

I think they probably captured everyone that makes reading Newday's website a regular part of their day. I can't imagine ever doing that personally but I guess it's possible. I hope that they just refund those people their money and move on and try something else.

jacquesm 17y ago
> and move on and try something else. Like what ? This is their hail-Mary pass, if the subscription model does not work what are they supposed to do next? If this is an example of what will happen when paywalls rise on 'old media' sites then they're dead in the water.
- prawn 17y ago
  If I were a local paper/news-source, I'd try offering business subscriptions to SMEs that included online access for employees, coverage/feature/advertorial for products and services, and a general online advertising component. Right now, the advertising presented on local news sites in Australia seems to be a mixture of random AdWords junk and larger-budget stuff (big auto sites, etc) but not much in the way of really localised small-business advertising. With more information on readers (down to postcode and age-group), I think they could definitely do more to sell small businesses on online advertising; I'm talking about butchers, school enrolments, tradespeople, restaurants, etc. The concept I mentioned would both collect info on readers and bring small businesses into the newspaper's community.
- Zev 17y ago
  This is their hail-Mary pass, if the subscription model does not work what are they supposed to do next? Put someone competent in charge of the paper and removing quality articles and placing ads in the paper instead. Also, go back to a format that resembles a newspaper that has news in it, rather then tabloid newspapers. I used to read Newsday on a daily basis. It took approximately a month under the Dolans (current owners) for my subscription to be canceled due to the reasons above. If the problems were fixed, I'd gladly go back to reading Newsday instead of switching between the Times and the Daily News. Because currently, this isn't a story of a newspaper dying. Its a story of the tabloids dying. And good riddance; perez hilton and the ilk don't need syndication.

forgotAgain 17y ago

As a resident locally "served" by Newsday I can only ask: what were those 35 people thinking! Comparing Newsday to the NY Times does a disservice to the Times. Since being taken over by Cablevision, Newsday can best be described as the New York Knicks of media. It has become a throwaway add-on for Cablevision in its competition with Verizon Fios.

joshwa 17y ago
In Newsday's geographic target area (Long Island, NY), if a news consumer is the type of reader who mainly reads news online, they'll go with the Times, or even the NY Post or Daily News online, rather than Newsday. Newsday's print readers (even before the Cablevision takeover) are the readers most likely to be still consuming print -- they skew older, less affluent, and less educated. Newsday's only competitive advantage content-wise, relative to the other NY papers, are hyper-local Long Island politics, culture listings, and classifieds. There just isn't any overlap between people interested in these things and people who consume most of their news online (AND are willing to pay for it).

nfnaaron 17y ago

"35 people." I wonder how big the Newsday executive suite is?

noodle 17y ago

the headline is a bit misleading. that is 35 paid online subscriptions from people who don't already have a print subscription (who get online access for free), and/or who don't already have a cablevision account (who get a free account). i'd be interested in knowing the number of people who are new subs for the print version in that same timeframe, and/or new subs from the cable deal.

seldo 17y ago
Even with all the free/bundled subscriptions, they admit that traffic is way down: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsday.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsday.com/ The paywall actually only went up at the end of 10/2009, but even so it's clear that audience loss accelerated, something like a 25% loss in November.
krobertson 17y ago
Agreed. The article is almost pointless. The online edition was meant to be a freebie, while the title makes it sound like the business is failing because of the web version. Granted, sounds like they're struggling as a whole and wasted a good chunk of cash on the site. But they couldn't have any had any serious exceptions if 75% of their market was going to get it for free.

andre 17y ago

Take into account that traffic fell from 2.2 Million to 1.5 Million unique users in the 3 months that that paywall has been up. So out of the 700,000 uniques that stopped reading, they only converted 35 to paying.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

adamt 17y ago

"The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million" I didn't realise people still spent $4M on what is basically a CMS. They could have bought a news focus and proven CMS like Ellington for less than a fraction of a percent of that. Leaving plenty of change to play for design.

kcway95 17y ago

Print pub management is never going to be able to figure out this web thing. Their egos are too big and they are totally incapable of dragging themselves away from the "Ad Block" business model. They are never going to be able to see readers as anything but numbers that they deliver to advertisers. I think the whole business will be pretty much gone by 2020 and, in my opinion, all I can say is "Good Riddance".

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

Summary: if you horribly mismanage a newspaper, you will lose readers.

Yaa101 17y ago

35 pairs of eyeballs makes me think that they will not make fantastic advertisement deals, I think they are doomed when keeping the paywalls up

tcarnell 17y ago

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=newsday.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://trends.google.com/websites?q=newsday.com&geo=all&...

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

eli 17y ago

5$ a week seems very expensive. Surely they weren't making that much per print subscriber

chris123 17y ago

Maybe there's never a "good" time to put up a pay wall, but it seems pretty dumb or naive to try to do it now, while so many people are still eliminating recurring expenses and generally trying to save money. If money is tight, switching to a free alternative when one of the sites you hit online puts up a pay wall seems like a no-brainer. Reminds me of "the penny gap" (see http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html). This is especially true with discretionary items and items that have many competitors and substitutes, especially free ones. That's the situation with newspapers. Sure, some might say each newspaper and writer is unique, which is true, but... ...maybe people aren't looking for "the best" newspaper or writer or web app, maybe they're looking for "the best free" newspaper, writer, or web app. NOTE: "Free" in this case means "ad supported," or at least "no subscription required."

parka 17y ago

There are so many Internet business models but why is it that the subscription model is the only one they can think of. Newspaper industry clearly needs a new business model. But the bigger problem is really the management who are incapable of coming up with one, or incapable of executing. This is really a people problem.