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Making a Buck Online - Without Ads
A New York Times article hosted by C|Net looks at the unique position of the Consumer Reports website; they're one of the few online resources that gets by completely on subscription fees. They have no ads. One key seems to be valuing their online readers as much as their print readers - and charging both the same amount. "The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times tried charging for some online content, then abandoned the practice. For a decade, however, Consumer Reports has charged Internet readers the same price as print subscribers, currently $26 a year (or $5.99 for a month's online access or $45 a year to get the magazine both in print and on the Web). While the rest of the industry sees print readers as more valuable--because advertisers do--Consumer Reports actually makes more money from readers on its Web site, because it avoids printing, trucking, and mailing costs."
Of all the websites, consumer reports (and in the UK; Which) must be seen as totally seperate from the products they are reviewing.
How good would it be if this edition of Consumer Reports (and its special report on Car safety) was brought to you in association with Ford?
liqbase
and once the reputation is established, if the content is good then I will pay for it no matter what format it comes in (and the web is certainly the easiest)
But consumer reports cannot feature ads like other papers, because it must be, uniquely independent, of the products it reviews. Other newspapers do not necessarily have to be independent.
While it would be nice if others were, I think I prefer paying less, and reading some ads.
Oh, it's not ONLY their ethics. The information they provide is truthful and valuable. People will pay for "data."
News articles, on the other hand, are essentially stories. I like to read them, but I read them with my morning coffee on the couch. Newspapers nowadays have lost their reputation for relevance and timeliness (typically by chasing ad revenue with sensationalist stories rather than by doing real investigative journalism) and so while they are interesting and amusing, they are not worth paying for.
Subscription journals, on the other hand, I will still pay for, just like I would pay for Consumer Reports.
When I read by "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" Maya Angelou I got one thing out of it; you have to be rich to have an opinion. This is why we pay for content from Consumer reports, to make them rich enough so they can have a real and honest judgment about things we buy. This is also why they can afford to make sure no one uses their opinion as an endorsement, they don't want to be soiled by the petty filth of capitalism.
The telling point in the article for me was the implication that leveraging their internet presence took them from losing 7 million a year to being 28 million in the black.
I remember being frustrated at researching a purchase, only to find links to CR articles which I couldn't access. Sans web, I'd have forgotten about CR, or if I remembered, might not have bothered subscribing because the information I wanted was in a back issue, and libraries are free.
What I'd really like to see is a study or report on ad revenue changes based on a site switching dropping required registration, like the NY Times did.
How many of you have seen an ad for something on a web page and thought "Fantastic! I must click this." Mostly when they were relevant ads showing up next to my search results. Showing up at the right place, at the right time, with my mind in the right context. I must say, Google got it right.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
> First, what does "more advanced tasks" actually mean? I could use an EEE PC for programming, ssh
> access, and, I'm sure, many other things that this reviewer has never heard of.
And neither has the intended target audience for the review (or for the EEE PC).
> I'm not claiming the situation is good for Linux gaming. But to claim there are no sophisticated
> games for it, even if we're all willing to ignore Wine/Cedega, is factually untrue. By "factually
> untrue", I mean it's in the realm of 2+2=5. Even for very large values of 2, that statement is
> wrong, and always will be.
It refers to the kind of games the self-declared gamers want to use a box for, rather than the kind of games the intended audience is interested in (flash games, solitaire).
The statement is factually untrue in the sense that "the world is round" is a factually untrue statement in the context of people who believe in a flat Earth (since, to the nerd, only a mathematically perfect sphere would qualify as "round").
Congratulation, you have discovered that consumer report is not written for nerds with autistic tendencies.
> this whole Slashdot article is about them making a buck online, so are they even nonprofit?
Yes, non-profit is a legal term that doesn't involve giving away stuff for free.
And "expert" can also refer to the ability to explain complicated stuff in terms ordinary people can understand.
So, wait, they're bad because they recommend a product you don't like for an audience you don't identify with, and don't recommend your OS of choice.
Just because you think Linux/Mac should be mentioned in glowing praise next to every mention of Vista doesn't make it so. The point of Consumer Reports is to review things, not advertise the competitors to those things.
I write bullshit
And sorry to reply to my own comment (mea culpa) but since when did "Independent" automatically mean "Hates Microsoft"? Some people independently like and recommend Windows. I hate this attitude if they recommend everyone buy a Mac Mini/install Linux they're free-thinking individualists, but if they recommend a cheap Dell with Vista they're being bribed by Microsoft.
I write bullshit
To be fair, I rarely use Consumer Reports for anything having to do with computers or software, because I can get more reliable expert opinions elsewhere.
NOTE: I'm offering this comment based upon my personal experience with Vista (I eventually went back to XP) and my interactions with hundreds of computer professionals whose opinions I have come to trust. I do not hate Microsoft. I might hate Steve Ballmer, but mostly because he is a sweaty friggin' maniac. I do love how he dances to "Safety Dance" though.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I grew up reading Consumer Reports, and I've always been very impressed with their methodology & analysis of their test data for almost everything. Want to know which microwave meets its published wattage? CR is the way to go. Want to know which tires actually perform to their published specs? -- CR. Want to know if Zune battery life is as MS says? etc, etc, etc,
/. reader. I've no idea who evaluates computers for them, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's some Engineer -- not the train or Civil kind, but certainly not the computer kind either. They don't really know the state of the industry, and they come to many conclusions I think are in error.
/.
Except for computers. As another child poster says, they're writing for a different audience than the typical
But said error is only from my prospective as a Computer Geek, and as a professional who's programmed, supported, and cursed at computers for 30 years. From the standpoint of my Biology Geek father or my Teaching Geek wife -- both very knowledgeable in their fields, too -- CR's evals are fine. And since I'm the family Computer Guy anyway, what CR says in that area really doesn't matter.
No one organization can be expert in everything, even CR. Except, of course,
Yes, but not Vista.
Why? Lots of people on Slashdot are willing to come up and state they like Vista, and while I personally don't use it I have used it in the past and could find nothing overtly objectionable about it. So, I'll ask again: why, when discussing Vista, does the concept of independent thought cease to exist, and instead anyone saying anything positive gets labelled as being paid by Microsoft? The article is from Consumer Reports, for christ's sake, widely held as putting independence and integrity above all else; so why the sudden turnaround? Because they recommend something you don't like for nebulous reasons?
Your post seems to be more about that; you don't agree with them, so it's "sloppy". Right.
I write bullshit
Then they shouldn't sell themselves as "experts" if every true expert in a subject matter says they're wrong (which, as you point out, is pretty much the case).
There's a difference between experts who make recommendations for other experts, and experts who make recommendations for casual users. CR has never pretended to care about anyone other than the average person looking for a good deal. I have yet to see any criticism of CR in the past decade (other than clear factual mistakes that CR corrected) that didn't boil down to someone's ego being hurt that CR didn't endorse their particular preference.
I have yet to meet a REAL expert in any subject matter who didn't recognize that CR was correct in their recommendations, given their target market. There are plenty of "enthusiasts" out there who claim to be experts and insist that everyone needs gold-plated Monster Cables.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
As a current Consumer Reports Online subscriber it's obvious to me why I'm willing to pay as much as the print magazine: it's worth more to me. In fact I'd even pay more for online that print in this case. When I want to go find reviews, I don't want to go dig through a pile of print and hope I haven't lost the issue with the review I need, and if I'm a new subscriber to the online service I basically just got all the back issues for free. The online service is so handy I use it for basically every major purchase I make now.
Why do you assume that publications are priced on a cost-plus basis? At any rate, you're only addressing the marginal cost of production; most of their costs are probably in the research and writing of the articles. Since they're selling information, and not paper or pixels, the value to customers is the appropriate basis for pricing. From that perspective, the online version is more valuable, since it's constantly updated, searchable, and organized by category rather than date.
If they were making a higher margin on online subscriptions but pushing people to print subscriptions because there was greater perceived value, they should decrease the price of online subscriptions to increase profits. But the article indicates that there is little overlap between the two audiences, and an individual's choice of print or online is largely based on what medium they're comfortable with. Most likely, the two subscriptions are priced equivalently so that customers *don't* think they are getting scammed: there is one price for the information, and you can have it delivered however you prefer.
If you think they're "sticking it to you" then go do the research on your own for $26/year (or wade through the print subscription if you think it's a better deal), but I am happy to pay for my online subscription even though I only log on every few months to look for a specific piece of information.