The Times paywalls go up...
Discussion
colonel c said:
The pundits recon that most of the other big players are eying up The Times project with a view to dong something similar.
So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
Slippery slope highlighted. So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
Frankeh said:
colonel c said:
The pundits recon that most of the other big players are eying up The Times project with a view to dong something similar.
So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
Slippery slope highlighted. So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
The free aspect of the internet, largely driven by advertisers was always going to be short term. There just isn't enough advertising money out there to make these sites pay for themselves in the long run.
tinman0 said:
Frankeh said:
colonel c said:
The pundits recon that most of the other big players are eying up The Times project with a view to dong something similar.
So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
Slippery slope highlighted. So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
The free aspect of the internet, largely driven by advertisers was always going to be short term.
Now how much does printing half a million copies of a newspaper?
Ok, now how much does it cost to run a reasonably robust website for a day.
It's bulls
t to say that they're not making money online. They just want to make more money. Frankeh said:
Ok, now how much does it cost to run a reasonably robust website for a day.
It's cheaper if you are a spotty teenager in your parents bedroom than if you rent prime London space, employ hundreds and hundreds of staff, run a massive expense account etc, etc, etc.Sure, if The Times was run by Nige the Nerd in his bedroom it would cost that much but then he probably wouldn't get many firms wanting to advertise on his w
k stained musings. 
Frankeh said:
tinman0 said:
Frankeh said:
colonel c said:
The pundits recon that most of the other big players are eying up The Times project with a view to dong something similar.
So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
Slippery slope highlighted. So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
The free aspect of the internet, largely driven by advertisers was always going to be short term.
Now how much does printing half a million copies of a newspaper?
Ok, now how much does it cost to run a reasonably robust website for a day.
It's bulls
t to say that they're not making money online. They just want to make more money. Web advertising is worthless.
Hits <> £
The only time web advertising works is when you have a specific demographic of people that you want to hit, eg StreetSafari advertising (in the past) on PistonHeads. That advertising works to an extent. But if I blanket the world about StreetSafari, then the interest I generate is substantially less - nearly non existent.
DonkeyApple said:
Frankeh said:
Ok, now how much does it cost to run a reasonably robust website for a day.
It's cheaper if you are a spotty teenager in your parents bedroom than if you rent prime London space, employ hundreds and hundreds of staff, run a massive expense account etc, etc, etc.Sure, if The Times was run by Nige the Nerd in his bedroom it would cost that much but then he probably wouldn't get many firms wanting to advertise on his w
k stained musings. DonkeyApple said:
Frankeh said:
Ok, now how much does it cost to run a reasonably robust website for a day.
It's cheaper if you are a spotty teenager in your parents bedroom than if you rent prime London space, employ hundreds and hundreds of staff, run a massive expense account etc, etc, etc.Sure, if The Times was run by Nige the Nerd in his bedroom it would cost that much but then he probably wouldn't get many firms wanting to advertise on his w
k stained musings. Frankeh said:
DonkeyApple said:
Frankeh said:
Ok, now how much does it cost to run a reasonably robust website for a day.
It's cheaper if you are a spotty teenager in your parents bedroom than if you rent prime London space, employ hundreds and hundreds of staff, run a massive expense account etc, etc, etc.Sure, if The Times was run by Nige the Nerd in his bedroom it would cost that much but then he probably wouldn't get many firms wanting to advertise on his w
k stained musings. Problem is that un-targetted web advertising is worth f
k ALL. 
tinman0 said:
hairykrishna said:
Google make >$6 billion a year in profit almost entirely from web advertising so it's certainly possible to support a company on web advertising income alone.
Traffic profiles are totally different, so you are comparing apples to oranges.I suspect that, as things stand, the Times will struggle to support itself through either model. It needs to change.
tinman0 said:
hairykrishna said:
Google make >$6 billion a year in profit almost entirely from web advertising so it's certainly possible to support a company on web advertising income alone.
Traffic profiles are totally different, so you are comparing apples to oranges.Personally, I haven't been back to the Times since the start of the paywall implementation - had the free service been streets ahead of the competition (or even ahead by a small margin) then things might have been different - but they weren't.
For all I know, behind the paywall it might now be an utter nirvana of precise, insightful, well thought out reportage and editorials, the utter dogs whotsits....but I'll never know. I'd bet a day's subscription that its the same slightly random layout, sometime lazy reporting, and confused opinion - with a price tag.
Down from 20m uniques (4.4% of the marketplace) to 1.5%. They're not saying how many paying subscribers they have; one suspects that Murdoch wouldn't publicly admit it if it was a failure so I guess we'll never know.
What I DO understand is the concept of paying for things - but only where you a) are unique at what you provide (eg. FT provides important financial analysis that others do not - and a large proportion of their subscriptions are bought by businesses for the benefit of their employees) or b) you do it better than anyone else (which, it can't be said, The Times or Sunday Times does).
Essentially what you're paying for is just their journos' take on things, along with weekly 'columns' from contributors. My guess is that Times die-hards will pay, but with no way 'in', they'll struggle to attract new readers and I suspect they will lose readers as they realise that they're not getting anything more than they can get elsewhere - legitimately - for free.
However...
What I DO understand is the concept of paying for things - but only where you a) are unique at what you provide (eg. FT provides important financial analysis that others do not - and a large proportion of their subscriptions are bought by businesses for the benefit of their employees) or b) you do it better than anyone else (which, it can't be said, The Times or Sunday Times does).
Essentially what you're paying for is just their journos' take on things, along with weekly 'columns' from contributors. My guess is that Times die-hards will pay, but with no way 'in', they'll struggle to attract new readers and I suspect they will lose readers as they realise that they're not getting anything more than they can get elsewhere - legitimately - for free.
However...
The Guardian said:
A disgruntled hack pings Monkey: "Among those no longer able to access the Times online content are all the freelances that contribute to the paper from outside Wapping Towers. No provision has been made to give them some sort of log-on or password so that they could, you know, do radical stuff like read their own copy, see if anyone has commented (unlikely, obviously, since no one will be reading it) or even read what they wrote last week. I know. I am one." Oops.
Edited by Funk on Sunday 11th July 22:20
colonel c said:
The pundits recon that most of the other big players are eying up The Times project with a view to doing something similar.
So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will see broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
This paid-for news content will only work if every other player colludes with Murdoch to implement it across the board. In normal circs I thought it was common knowledge that the only news-type content consumers are happy to pay for is very local stuff, as per the existing model in some US districts where residents know they'll not read 'their' content anywhere else on the net. So ultimately consumers might be left with a choice of who's spin they want on their news. However news services don't grow on trees so if it's the only way some ordinations can survive then so be it. Or perhaps we will see broadband bundles including a news subscription from one company or other thrown in.
Edited by tonym911 on Sunday 11th July 22:20
hairykrishna said:
tinman0 said:
hairykrishna said:
Google make >$6 billion a year in profit almost entirely from web advertising so it's certainly possible to support a company on web advertising income alone.
Traffic profiles are totally different, so you are comparing apples to oranges.If web impressions were in anyway valuable, then every website on the planet would be boot strapped by ad revenue cash, and I would have retired a multi millionaire many years ago from my own million impressions per day.
And I can easily prove this point about web advertising.
How many ads have you clicked on in the last month? (Excluding anything Google serves up).
I'm struggling to remember a single ad that I've clicked on in the last year, let alone month.
tinman0 said:
hairykrishna said:
tinman0 said:
hairykrishna said:
Google make >$6 billion a year in profit almost entirely from web advertising so it's certainly possible to support a company on web advertising income alone.
Traffic profiles are totally different, so you are comparing apples to oranges.If web impressions were in anyway valuable, then every website on the planet would be boot strapped by ad revenue cash, and I would have retired a multi millionaire many years ago from my own million impressions per day.
And I can easily prove this point about web advertising.
How many ads have you clicked on in the last month? (Excluding anything Google serves up).
I'm struggling to remember a single ad that I've clicked on in the last year, let alone month.
Only to click the bloody 'mute' button, obviously.
tinman0 said:
I'm struggling to remember a single ad that I've clicked on in the last year, let alone month.
Your ignorance about advertising online really does show in that particular sentence.The average person (And yes, that includes you) will click a lot of advertising links each day. You might just not know it.
The likelihood is that in the past week, if you've looked to buy anything online then you've clicked on a lot of ads. And I mean a lot.
Been looking at buying an electrical item in the past week? Did you go to a review site? Did they have a handy amazon link at the bottom?
Yeah, well that would have been an affiliate link. If you navigate from one site to another by clicking a link, the likelihood is someone got paid for that transaction.
For example, on reddit.com you can post ads. One user purely posts text based ads which say something like "One of the greatest films of this decade"- The times.
You click the link and it goes to the DVD of "The Departed" or some s
t on amazon.However that affiliate now gets 4% of your purchases for that day. Not only if you buy the DVD, but if you buy ANYTHING he will get 4%.
I heard from a guy who owns a small book review site than he did a review for a book, someone clicked his amazon affiliate link and then went on to buy a s
tload of electronics that day. He got something like 10,000 impressions on the review, but made a return of 500 dollars, or somewhere there abouts. Hardly anything was made from book sales.
Also, the fact that you were selling impressions just proves my point that you're blaming online advertising for your own inexperience in the field.
Anyway, check out this camera
Edited by Frankeh on Monday 12th July 15:17
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