An independent journal about the Gannett Co. and the news industry's digital transition
Friday, July 13, 2012
Half of first year's paywall revenue comes in first three months, according to study cited by Poynter
The study, coming as Gannett launches more paywalls, tracked the pace of digital subscription revenue for one newspaper site over about three years, according to Poynter Online.
This is another example of amateur reporting by today's Poynter, a tiny shadow of its former self. There are no real numbers for Our-Hometown; just percentages. Ten percent increase in revenue: from what to what? Story does not even mention how much the paywall costs or number of paid digital subscribers.
This is telling us what we all know. People who are not web savvy including older readers and those with limited web knowledge will pay for content. I call this the "pay-up sucker" method of doing business.
I still want to see a correlation between web ad revenue and paywalls. What happens when a website with decent to strong online ad revenue goes paid? Sure, initial subscription revenue goes up, but what does the local business community say about it?
For some reason, not a single company is willing to put those real figures out there.
I wonder if the website in this story in like the G A N N E T T sites. By that, I mean once their web-savvy readers figured out how to get around the paywall, they stopped paying?
Everyone knows Gannett paywalls are a porous as a sieve. You can use Incognito mode in Google Chrome, or Private Mode in Safari. And don't forget to clear your cache/cookies. (There's another workaround, if the paywall site is partnered with free site posting the same content: just copy the URL for the story you want, paste it into a new page, then take out the part of the paper that is the paywall site's name and replace it with the partner's name.)
To 1:15: would you please stop it with the "porous paywalls" comments? It shows your ignorance. ALL PAYWALLS have holes. This is not a Gannett issue. It's called a business model.
I can tell you 4 ways to get past both the WSJ and Times paywalls.
Look at it the way Apple did. Do people pirate music? Of course, is it easy? Pretty much. But Steve Jobs realized that if you make purchasing really easy people would prefer to pay a reasonable price so they wouldn't have to jump through hoops (even minor ones) to get what they wanted.
Whenever a huge story breaks locally you'll see more and more people pay for that content.
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This is another example of amateur reporting by today's Poynter, a tiny shadow of its former self. There are no real numbers for Our-Hometown; just percentages. Ten percent increase in revenue: from what to what? Story does not even mention how much the paywall costs or number of paid digital subscribers.
ReplyDeleteTo quote a former executive, "Good enough is good enough" That is what goes for journalism on this blog
ReplyDeleteThis is telling us what we all know. People who are not web savvy including older readers and those with limited web knowledge will pay for content. I call this the "pay-up sucker" method of doing business.
ReplyDeleteI still want to see a correlation between web ad revenue and paywalls. What happens when a website with decent to strong online ad revenue goes paid? Sure, initial subscription revenue goes up, but what does the local business community say about it?
For some reason, not a single company is willing to put those real figures out there.
I wonder if the website in this story in like the G A N N E T T sites. By that, I mean once their web-savvy readers figured out how to get around the paywall, they stopped paying?
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows Gannett paywalls are a porous as a sieve. You can use Incognito mode in Google Chrome, or Private Mode in Safari. And don't forget to clear your cache/cookies. (There's another workaround, if the paywall site is partnered with free site posting the same content: just copy the URL for the story you want, paste it into a new page, then take out the part of the paper that is the paywall site's name and replace it with the partner's name.)
To 1:15: would you please stop it with the "porous paywalls" comments? It shows your ignorance. ALL PAYWALLS have holes. This is not a Gannett issue. It's called a business model.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you 4 ways to get past both the WSJ and Times paywalls.
Look at it the way Apple did. Do people pirate music? Of course, is it easy? Pretty much. But Steve Jobs realized that if you make purchasing really easy people would prefer to pay a reasonable price so they wouldn't have to jump through hoops (even minor ones) to get what they wanted.
Whenever a huge story breaks locally you'll see more and more people pay for that content.