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Make Money Fast Online

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the black-and-white-and-oh-you've-heard-this-one dept.

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.

8 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Finally... by intermodal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    somebody using the 'net to profit off the content creators rather than the viewers. Sounds like they're being paid for for exposure rather than the content posting itself. Well done, I say!

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  2. Soo.... by Verizon+Guy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Note that they're not making money from banner ads, but from classified ads

    Does this mean that Slashdot is going to start a new Classifieds section?

    --

    Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski

  3. I can vouch for web classfieds.... by H3XA · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... I get my Aussie news from smh.com.au and the other day after reading the news I decided to go see what the car market was like for Sport Coupes. I was very impressed by drive.com.au - it makes decent use of web connected databases and hypertext to provide a service that dead-tree cannot (quick comparisons, searches, specifications, web reviews, etc). It makes the shopping "experience" so much easier I can see why it is popular enough to be profitable.

    BTW - the careers classifieds are quite good as well if you are in Australia and looking for a job (professional).

    - HeXa

  4. Our solution... by rockwellpa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We partnered with a local print paper, http://adpak.org, to provide web services to their clients. This works out great for our company, http://cfwebworks.com, and theirs. They utilize exisiting sales reps. to sell our services, and in turn they get a small percentage of each project. The print paper is not taxed with a learning/working a new technology, yet they can still profit from it. It's great for us because it has helped us to gain visibility in the local market.

  5. Re:I already know how to make money fast online by elixx · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Hah, it's funny because my mind automatically identified this article as spam for a second, until I realized it was Slashdot spam, not e-mail spam. ;)

    --
    No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
  6. Are they happy about it though: by aengblom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Note that they're not making money from banner ads, but from classified ads.

    The question though. Are they happy about it?

    What do I mean? Classifieds are THE most profitable part of dead-tree newspapers. A major reason newspapers WENT online is because they feared their classified business would be stolen by web sites. Hopefully--and I say this because I READ newspapers and Web sites--the demand for classifieds can support both.

    [Disclaimer: Newspaper Association of America Slashdotted so I didn't read the article]

    --


    So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
    1. Re:Are they happy about it though: by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Interesting

      People misunderstand what the internet IS. It gives people what they want. If they want classifieds, they will find them on the internet. If you give them something they don't want (adverts) they will ignore it. Boom. The nature of the internet. Giving people exactly want they want and nothing else.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  7. Major problem: newspapers taking it seriously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    [posting anonymous to avoid karma whoring and self-promotion]

    I'd been developing a PHP online classifieds system for a while and pretty much have it done (just need to incorporate an existing search engine from another project and get importing from XML working), specifically as a portfolio piece. It's easy enough to do that probably most ./ programmers could figure out their own system for themselves. The major problem is getting the newspapers to take the medium seriously. Your average daily newspaper does a huge amount of classifieds sales and even if you charged something ludicrously small like 0.50 extra to move each ad online, you could still make a couple of thousand extra per day. Run it using a system like mine (linux box, postgresql, not too crazy server needs) and you pretty much net what you gross.

    Now, they already are doing online classifieds and for some newspapers the system is up and running and looking good. You can even browse across chains of newspapers (friggin' media cartels) to get all sorts of ads. But, when you do, what you get listed back to you is pretty sparse. This suggests they're content to keep the push in print. This might make sense, because classifieds are a major revenue generator for a newspaper, and you don't suddenly want to offer an online classifieds system priced so well that it disrupts the print classifieds.

    Small newspapers that don't have a whole lot of money to spend is going to think of online classifieds as copying and pasting out of a Quark page -- quick enough to get the job done but hardly very impressive. The end result is pretty ugly, non-searchable, and usually archived by page instead of by ad. This suggests they don't think the Internet is worth the extra effort needed.