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Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials
Adam9 writes "As Salon fights for survival, they have introduced a new advertising program that allows you to receive a free 12 hour pass by clicking through about 10 seconds of advertisements. Currently, the advertisements are from Mercedes-Benz. According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995. They also have about 45,000 subscribers right now." Jamie also pointed out this article from the WSJ, as well as the words from Salon themselves about it.
If they're getting paid per click, then generally advertisers don't pay for forced clicks, ie: I'm clicking this because I have to, not because I'm genuinely interested in their product. At least in the adult industry, this is a *big* no-no unless you accept a *much* smaller pay rate (generally called 'blind' clicks). I don't know how it'll fly with their advertisers.
If Salon has decided to take this route, why not allow micropayments? I don't have a subscription to Salon, because I don't read it very often. But I do sometimes find 'premium' stories I'd like to read...Just not enough to get a subscription. If I could pay 25 cents or whatever to read the story, I gladly would.
I realize there are problems with accepting micropayments via credit card, but certainly something like PayPal could be used.
- James
Overheard from irc.slashnet.org:
;)
slyguy^: How many paying subscribers are there to Slashdot?
Hemos: 12. After we split it all up, I got a #4 combo at Taco Bell.
It's an interesting idea, a "temporary subscription" in return for viewing some advertising. It seems there's something for everyone. The advertiser gets a forum where people actually have to click through the ad; Salon gets some money from the advertiser; and non-subscribers get access to "premium" content. If this works (and Salon stays in business in part because of this), perhaps other content sites will follow suit.
-Brendan
It's too bad to see Salon go -- they have genuinely interesting features on occassion. That said, I don't see how they ever really planned on surviving once the dot-com meltdown occurred. Selling the ability to opt-out of annoying ads just didn't cut it, especially given their level of overhead (big-name writers and the like). If Suck couldn't keep its head above water, Salon was always doomed. Still, it'll suck to have the only real webzine be Slate.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Now they have a solid base of advertisers and 45,000 paying subscribers, which is really good for an online magazine. The WSJ article says they are looking at a strategy of reducing costs. Sounds like a plan to me. Is it really conceivable that they can't find a way to keep costs within expected revenues?
- Start up
- Get lots of subscribers
- Sell out or IPO
Like in poker, they held a bad hand too long, and now they're dead. Big deal.Salon must be incredibly expensive to run. They employ full time journos and lots of support staff and techies. If a place like Kuro5hin.org (literally a one man show) barely hangs on through fundraisers and pledge drives then Salon with their scores of employees and meager advertising income are going down the tubes quickly.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I was a paying member of Salon for a year. The main way I read Salon was through my PDA using Avantgo. Salon's method for prompting users to get premium subscriptions was by giving a 1 page teaser of a premium article, then saying they should become paying members to read the rest.
Their avantgo channel, however, had no method in place for Premium subscribers to get full stories on their PDAs! For a year, the premium stories would have their little teaser, then at the bottom there would be a little apology to the effect of 'Sorry, we haven't made a channel for our premium subscribers yet, but we will soon!'
Empty promises.
They never made the channel, and since my primary interface to Salon was via PDA, I wasn't getting what I had paid for (premium access).
Their business decision to indefinately postpone the premium channels have probably cost them quite a handful of customers, which is unfortunate.
According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995.
During which time VA Software lost $725 million.
I think there are many reasons Salon is failing: too much overhead, lack of a print version, content too stagnant for the medium(NET). But the real nail in the coffin is their far-left reporting/editorial. The Fray is great, but if you are going to post a bunch of baseless rhetoric to get readers fired up you had better have a convenient method for opposing views to reply. Otherwise you wind up with former readers like me, who don't like to be beaten-up with our arms tied behind our backs. Disagreeing with many of the articles drove me to read the site, but in the end it also drove me away. Slate is a similar site, but the forum is much more accessible and tied to the content and the authors/guest writers and columnists seem to actually read the forum posts.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I used this little feature about two weeks ago. I wanted to read the rest of one their "premium" articles that I really wanted to see the conclusion of. I just happened to actually read one of the ad's that claimed that I could get a free pass to read this article if only I would look at this $60,000 BMW or something. I agreed. After about 10 seconds an ad with about 10 frames generated. By the time I got to the third or fourth frame, I noticed that I didn't have to click through all of the images. In the lower corner, in very fine print, was a "skip to article" button or something. It worked.
I'd like to state that I worked for a company that had over 180,000 "subscribers" before it folded in 2001. We didn't charge for a subscription, but we did charge for content. Each piece of content you viewed was a small fee. Quite frankly, I was never convinced of this business worthiness of this approach. We burnt through about 30 million before going belly up. Looks like Salon will be doing the same thing.
I think online communities are going to have a hard time selling to individuals. While the metaphore works for real world newspapers and magazines, their publishing numbers are going down. Less people are reading them because they can get free content on the web. Now, I totally believe you should pay for content, but it should be subscription based and not be on a per site basis. In a sense, it should work like AOL (I know, I know). With AOL, you get prepackaged content. I'm suggesting you pay xx.xx dollars and get a pass to 20 or 30 web sites that all use the same password. You should be able to sign up for these sites through different subscribers, like you would your domain registration or cable access. The web sites still get the same amount of money, but if one 'net-network can provide a lower price but sell to more people, they can compete. They could also provide different site packages or offer more sites.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Who really thought that giving ... facials over the internet was a good idea?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would think any company that could figure out how to give facials over the Internet would make a ton of money. I'd like to see a copy of THAT business plan !
Anyone remember those old warez sites, (and some H/P/A sites as well) where they tried to force you to click their sponsors, or links to top-sites in order to access them?
I guess all kinds of marketing comes around. But the real question is, are people too cheap to pay for salon premium really going to buy Mercedes-Benzs?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
600K a year would not come close to covering the cost of the high-profile and high-quality writers and editors they have on board. Then don't forget their production staff, sales staff, marketing staff, tech people, legal counsel, bandwidth costs, associated overhead, etc., etc.,
Damn, post a story about how Salon is losing money and then link them in the story? That's like telling your doctor that you have a headache and then they kick you in the nuts.
I'm kidding, I do agree Salon is liberal-oriented but have no problem with it given my politics. I'm pretty moderate and don't read Mother Jones or the National Review. Most magazines on/offline are politically oriented one way or another, most to far greater extremes. Perhaps out of concern for "balance" Salon has recently brought on Andrew Sullivan. I wish they'd found a better writer, but oh well.
/. is not immune.
The remarkable thing about Salon is that it has actually broken a number of stories over the last half-dozen years. There are frequent examples of excellent writing (not all of it). Many people of influence keep track of what the journal is saying. That's quite an accomplishment, and a good deal more expensive to achieve than your average on-line reader-driven news clipping service (ahem).
I would not encourage them to try to be all things to all people, if such a thing were possible. Certainly there could be editorial improvements, but nothing would turn Salon into a fount of wealth. The fundamental problem is the as-yet unestablished business model for this kind of thing. Others are watching Salon cast about for the answer -- the magazine is even polling its readers' opinions -- to learn from their success or failure.
I finally did subscribe to Salon relatively recently -- I *hope* they don't go bankrupt! If they do, it will foretell decreased access to the online versions of traditional press, the failure of other online forums, and pressure on the rest to somehow raise profitability by increasing annoying advertising or other schemes. Despite it's far lower overhead,
Ask not for whom the bell tolls....
It has been noted that Salon's financial woes (how the hell did they rack up 80M in debt?) stems from them hiring good writers. Excellent writers, in fact, top-of-the-line. Noam Chomsky comes to mind. But I have to point out that Alternet.org has writing that is, IMO, and just a smidge to the left of Salon.
So I have to ask, was the 80M in debt really necessary? Personally, I like Salon, and it is one of only three news sites in my bookmarks (along with the BBC and the aforementioned Alternet.org), and I am a subscriber to their premium service. But the idea that writers won't write unless they're paid is a lot like the RIAA saying people won't make songs if they can't !@#$ you in the butt for $16.99/cd. Just doesn't make any sense. But it sure seems to make sense to Salon:
"The greatest weakness of Internet users -- all of us -- is our failure to recognize the value of intellectual property. Of course we love free access to information -- the more the better. For years, those of us who are information junkies have been like pigs in mud. It has been fun, but those something-for- nothing days are over. There is a difference between the Internet mantra that "information loves to be free" and free information."
There is a large talent pool in the world, Salon. Use it. Big names are nice but big names are why you won't exist in a few years. The notion that talented writers only write if you lob a lot of money at them is just as false for the written word as it is for music.
My
Limekiller
I subscribed to Yahoo internet life last year -- dead after 3 issues
I subscribed to Salon last month (admittedly I knew they've been in hot water more or less the last few years) and now this
I oughtta start charging these companies for my not subscribing to them...
Everybody have a look at http://www.mercedesproblems.com/ before you even think of buying one of these clunkers.
I'm giving Volvo a try now.
I just went to salon and read a premium article. Here is my synopsis...
If a 10 second ad can keep salon and their reporters working I'm all for it. The US needs independent journalists. (Even if they sometimes say things you'd rather not hear. Personally I'm offended by something in Salon every single day. If I wasn't, I wouldn't bother to read it.)
Everybody is asking, "How could an online magazine lose so much money" and everybody else is giving vague answers. According to their financial reports they seem to have trimmed down considerably this year, but looking at last year they were spending about a million a month on content and production, half a million on sales and marketing, $100k on research and development (??? you tell me) and about $400k on admin. That's $24 million a year right there. Losing $11 million/year doesn't seem so far-fetched.
What interests me is that each of the two top execs made $300k last year. Not bad pay for shovelling venture capital down a hole, eh?
...not its dopey pro-rich-liberal bias or its coastline cliquishnes or its porn-driven, moronically desperate marketing schemes.
And they've gotten more average as they've asked for more money. You can turn on any cable news channel and see Andrew Sullivan and Arianna Huffington saying the same stupid things they say in their Salon columns. Greil Marcus writes for every magazine on earth. Tom Tomorrow and Lynda Barry are more widely syndicated than Seinfeld. Damien Cave's tech columns are no better than your average +4 Interesting
They've fired their best writers (Paglia, for example) to cut costs, and hired utterly average dead-tree columnists (why King Kaufman and Allen Barra instead of, say, Ralph Wiley?--what is this, 1982?), and just flat-out failed to bring in interesting new people who could liven things up (Jim Goad, Nick Gillespie and Justin Raimondo could probably use a few extra bucks from side jobs, for example).
Browse their archives from three to five years ago. The articles were mostly good. They were almost all interesting. Some were even surprising. But they waited until the site degenerated into PBS blandness (plus occasional class-baiting "I Was a Stripper for a Day" and "Trailer-Park Republicans: Whitey in the Wild" bilge and "classy" porn for prissy feminists and self-hating men) to start asking for money.
That--and simple mismanagement--is why they're broke. And they deserve it. "Lilies that fester..."
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
When will it occur to Mercedes that anyone trying to save $12 a year in subscription costs probably isn't going out to buy a Mercedes?
Uh huh. And the code looks like this.
/* 1% chance of payment */
//if (Math.random() < 0.01) {
// return true;
//}
//return false;
// Fixed a bug (Bob - Marketing Department)
/** Decide if payment is required.
* @author Jim - IT Development
*/
public boolean isPayment {
return true;
}
How about -
Indymedia
BBC
or for some partial journalism / general questioning and sometimes odd, but certainaly not bland corp media
Michael Moore
DisInfo
then there are specialist sites for different topics -
Cryptome
Statewatch
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
What I have seen is this: No ads, combined with the knowledge that Slashdot still got paid anyway (thereby staying open), every time I hit their server. I don't really care very much if any new features ever get added or not.
That's all there is to it, and it's really that simple. I hate ads (and I fast-forward through them on my Tivo), and if I just filter, then someday Slashdot will cease to be (*). Without money, the wires that carry electricity and data would stop working, and then it would be over.
That would matter to be, because I have fun here. I learn things, I read funny things that make me laugh, I troll, I egotistically shout nonsense just to hear my own voice, I watch others do the same, and we all waste time together. That's all I ask for, so it's ok if that's all I get.
(*) How do I -- just one little guy using up half a cent credit with every page load -- possibly make that much difference? I don't know. If there are lots of people like me, then we'll add up to something. If there aren't many of us, then I hope someday maybe there will be. The basic principle is: if you want to change the world, you must first change yourself. Conduct yourself in the manner that you hope others conduct themselves. This is my strategy for keeping my playground open.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.