Make Money Fast Online

A story in a magazine for dead-tree newspaper editors notes that many of the internet operations established in conjunction with newspapers are actually making money. Interesting stuff. Note that they're not making money from banner ads, but from classified ads.

Comments

One of the biggest problems

[inkswamp]

The article only touches on it briefly, but one of the biggest problems with making money from online newspapers is not the technology, not the feasibility of it, but rather getting people out of the old way of thinking. Some of it is ignorance. Some is fear of change.

I'm a web developer for a major, regional newspaper and I see it on a regular basis. There is interest in advertising online amongst advertisers. The real problem is getting sales reps out of the mode that print is the only way to go. The few reps who take an interest in selling online get almost immediate results. We've watched reps reluctantly go off to sell online and come back stunned by the response (however, the nature of a sales rep's job makes it easy to forget that); other reps claim that they spend all their time convincing advertisers that print is the way to go, and can't dilute that message by bringing online sales into it (and if that sounds like an excuse... well....)

The problem isn't limited to sales reps. Others (and I am not kidding about this) think the Internet is a "fad." I've heard that term kicked around by many people in the newspaper business. Watching people put the Internet in the same category as hula hoops or pet rocks gives me a real sense of what we're up against. Some of our reporters and editors express resentment in "giving our work away for free" online.

It's a frustrating experience, but from my perspective, the core problem is changing the way people think, particularly those who have the power to guide these kinds of things to profitability.

Re:One of the biggest problems

[clark625]

I find your comments interesting. TV has been around over fifty years now (though popular for less time than that), and its popularity has really crippled newspapers. There used to be multiple newspapers per town, and extra editions available in the evenings when conditions warranted it.

Nowadays, if you want news, you flip on CNN. Or maybe one of their competitors. The newspaper tends to merely repeat information one could have gotten from the TV. But the newspapers found a nich--they could go much more in depth in detail because it doesn't matter how long it will take to read. Sure, there are space requirements, but information can be condensed.

So what I find most interesting is that some newspapers still believe that TV is a fad. And you know what? They are sorta right. And so are the people who believe that the internet is a fad. My opinion is that very soon, people will refer to the internet before flipping on a TV to get news. To prove this point, look at what happened on 9/11--people at work just slammed cnn.com and the other news sites. Most businesses don't have TV access--and if they do, they don't make it available to all.

Newspapers are ideal for internet publications. They are used to written forms of media. They know how to place ads on a page in such ways that they will draw attention. TV's only option is to actually break the content up and force you to watch an advertisement (or change channels). I believe that newspapers should be much better capable of handling this new media.

But, like you say, many newspapers aren't committed to the internet. They don't see how their current business can easily integrate into a viable online presence. It's sad that the authoritative news site on the internet is cnn.com, which actually has to work outside its own niche to produce. This is hardly efficient.

Anyways, like I said before--TV is sorta a fad. It has reached its peak in terms of news content (and I would venture that entertainment content has been piss-poor for years now). And at some point, the internet will peak, too. Probably with some media advancement like virtual reality to the consumer. That would allow TV companies to re-take the lead. Just imagine not merely seeing the news, but actually getting to "be" on location and watching the events occur. It's all just a long, drawn out competition and it's hard to say who will eventually win out.

Re:Online Classifieds?

[bluGill]

When I see an advertisement in the local paper, either online or dead tree, I'm confident that it is someone local to me. I call them up, go see it in person, and if I like it I bring it home. No worrys about that e-bay auction that Atari in mint condition that turns out to be made of cholate mint, no worry about buying a $1000 item from a seller who has been selling cheap stuff to get a good rating, and is now skipping town with my money.

E-bay is okay, but I don't like waiting for that auction to be over (and in the mean time I see a good deal elsewhere, but I still have the high bid)

Local is the key. I won't look at the Boone Iowa classifieds, but I will look at the Buffalo, Minnesota clasifieds. This is also good for advertiseers who need to serve local clients. Most slashdot readers would not take their car to Autoworks in Rockford MN (the owner is a good friend of mine), but if they could reach all the slashdot readers in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis they might advertise on slashdot. However reaching the Asian readers is a waste of their money.

Meet the new media, same as the old media

[babbage]

Of course, the most profitable part of a traditional newspaper is also the classifieds. Think about it -- classifieds are pretty much the only advertisements that people actually want to look through. The rest of the ads are just distractions, but classifieds -- want ads, job listings, movie listings, personals, etc -- are actually attractions, bringing in readers & revenues.

And even though they're dirt simple -- no need to pay salaries for journalists, editors, illustrators & other creative talent -- a huge fraction of a paper's regular readers will spend lots of time poring over the daily classified ads. In other words, they're not just a big source of income, they're also a small expense.

If marketers are just waking up to this now, they've been asleep at the wheel for years.