3 ms·

“Used To Be Free" is not a good business model

7 points by aresant 17y ago

krschultz 17y ago
Good point, bad example. The entire NYT pay issue is a lot deeper than he lets on. I for one will pay for the NYT. In the past I could have said the same for the WSJ, though these days not so much. Other than those two I can't think of any other news source I would pay for. To say CNN.com and NYT.com have the same content on them is just untrue, especially if you live in the New York area. As for the comment "It’s reported that the NYT site network has 40 MILLION unique users, yet they can’t seem to make enough money to support themselves without charging? I literally CHOKE thinking of what kind of marketing and sales I could generate with that kind of audience. I know people who regularly generate millions of dollars in sales with a mere fraction of that traffic." Having been in the NYT office a few times, I know that you need to make billions with a B to pay for that place. They have one of the biggest buildings in Manhattan, with literally dozens of floors of employees. I can't even estimate how many people there are, but it is in the thousands. The problem is not that they suck at selling ads, the problem is that the ad-supported model just systemically won't work for a paper their size. They either need to shrink expenses massively or find a new revenue model. So their calculation is that they can make more money off a few million paying subscribers than tens of millions of advertising viewers. We shall see. If they gutted their payroll they would be just another weak news agency so lets hope they can make the pay model work.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  They either need to shrink expenses massively They have a large expense in the form of putting news, in ink, onto pieces of paper and distributing those pieces of paper all over the world. And I know that's the first thing I'd look at cutting if I were them...
junklight 17y ago
I spent most of that article wondering about the formatting - its one thing to be quirky and idiosyncratic but when it gets in the way of the message it might be time to tone it down a little.
wanderr 17y ago
"I literally CHOKE thinking" Literally? Really?

7 points by aresant 17y ago

Good point, bad example. The entire NYT pay issue is a lot deeper than he lets on. I for one will pay for the NYT. In the past I could have said the same for the WSJ, though these days not so much. Other than those two I can't think of any other news source I would pay for. To say CNN.com and NYT.com have the same content on them is just untrue, especially if you live in the New York area. As for the comment "It’s reported that the NYT site network has 40 MILLION unique users, yet they can’t seem to make enough money to support themselves without charging? I literally CHOKE thinking of what kind of marketing and sales I could generate with that kind of audience. I know people who regularly generate millions of dollars in sales with a mere fraction of that traffic." Having been in the NYT office a few times, I know that you need to make billions with a B to pay for that place. They have one of the biggest buildings in Manhattan, with literally dozens of floors of employees. I can't even estimate how many people there are, but it is in the thousands. The problem is not that they suck at selling ads, the problem is that the ad-supported model just systemically won't work for a paper their size. They either need to shrink expenses massively or find a new revenue model. So their calculation is that they can make more money off a few million paying subscribers than tens of millions of advertising viewers. We shall see. If they gutted their payroll they would be just another weak news agency so lets hope they can make the pay model work.

ubernostrum 17y ago
They either need to shrink expenses massively They have a large expense in the form of putting news, in ink, onto pieces of paper and distributing those pieces of paper all over the world. And I know that's the first thing I'd look at cutting if I were them...

junklight 17y ago

I spent most of that article wondering about the formatting - its one thing to be quirky and idiosyncratic but when it gets in the way of the message it might be time to tone it down a little.

wanderr 17y ago

"I literally CHOKE thinking" Literally? Really?