4 ms·
If monetizing with ads is obviously not working, why do it at all then? Shut off all deeper articles behind a paywall, have just a few free articles of the ful
by jnurmine 8y ago
If monetizing with ads is obviously not working, why do it at all then?
Shut off all deeper articles behind a paywall, have just a few free articles of the full content to show people what they would get if they pay, and don't bother with the ads (and by extension, ad blockers).
Would this work? If it doesn't, then isn't the real problem the articles themselves? Their value to the intended audience is not high enough.
I mean, if the articles are so uninteresting that people do not want to pay, with ads or whatever else, and the NYT (or any other news site) cannot make the articles more interesting, then they simply scale down, or go out of business completely. A business is not entitled to a revenue stream just because they happen to exist or happen to prefer a certain delivery channel over another, or some form of monetization over other, and so on.
So... how to make the articles more interesting to people?
Everything competes with people's time. Articles aimed primarily at entertaining its readers compete not only with other news sites which do the same, but also with Netflix, Youtube, games, movies, books. There is too much competition.
I say: bring back good old fashioned investigative journalism, make high impact articles which expose corruption, dig deep into things, and so on.
In short make the articles worth people's time, and they will surely pay for those, too.
And ditch the ads. (Yes, I am actually pro paywall, as long as there is a high quality freebie or two every week)
- ouid 8y agoThe problem with subscription models is that unlike with ad revenue and donation models, you cannot subsidize your circulation by extracting more revenue from wealthier people more for the same service.
- saghm 8y agoI assume you mean this sarcastically, as that sounds like a feature to me, not a bug
- ouid 8y agoI absolutely don't mean it sarcastically. If you want to make money as a media service in today's extreme wealth inequality, you need to find a way to do this. There are no exceptions.
- saghm 8y agoI might be misunderstanding you then; it sounds to me like you're saying that companies need to make more money without making any changes to their service. This doesn't seem to make any sense to me; if the service remains exactly the same, then the costs remain the same, so if you keep increasing how much money you make, eventually you'll become profitable and shouldn't need to continue to increase the cost of your product. Am I missing something?
- ouid 8y agoif I can charge different people different amounts for the same service, then I can maximize my circulation at the same time as maximizing my profit per person.