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."

Comments

Reputation counts too

[Titoxd]

And Consumer Reports also has a reputation of not screwing people on both ends, so its clients are more than willing to pay for the content, be it in print or online. It just shows you the power that good ethics can have.

Re:Reputation counts too

[Titoxd]

Aye. Moreover, Consumer Reports is in an enviable position, as their comparisons allow people to save money, be it by getting a cheaper product, or by not spending on an overpriced piece of junk. As a result of these long-term savings, the consumer sees that CR provides value to him or her, and any company that has a product that is perceived as valuable has a captive market. I know I would think, "If this magazine can save me money any time, it might be worth the purchase price."

Re:Reputation counts too

[Fozzyuw]

The information they provide is truthful and valuable. People will pay for "data."

Exactly. I signed up for CR online when I was looking to buy a new cars in 2006 (and still had it when I bought another in 2007). To find the right car for me I spent the $30 to help read up on the cars I was interested in. It helped. I was able to read up on the past history of the cars, like the Toyota Corolla, and find it had a long history of excellent reviews. I was also able to knock a few cars off my list, like the Chevy Aveo, which had a recall in 2006/7 (I forget what year). Despite both cars having similar gas milage, the Aveo was a much smaller car (something my fiancee, who's French, felt more comfortable with given her European cars) with not as good reviews. In America, given the average size of a car is much larger, I felt safer with her having a slightly bigger car and she's adjusted to the size difference, given that roads here are also much larger.

That small amount of money I wrote off as part of the cost of a proper new-car purchase. And what's $45 when you're spending $15,000? However, I have no reason to continue until there's some other big name purchase I want to do so I canceled. I'll pick up their magazine at the gym when I see one laying around. I also found it more difficult than expected to cancel my account with CR.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Reputation counts too

[The Raven]

What's your opinion of The Real News? If you haven't heard about it, it's a guy who used to make documentaries brainstorm. He wanted a news network that was not beholden to government money, corporate money, or ads... only subscriptions. He estimates that if they get 200,000 subscribers, at $10 per month, they can operate a news network that's broadcast quality, with several hours of new daily programming.

It's worth checking out. A very similar ethos to Consumer Reports... only the subscriber matters.

Re:micropayments

[Anonymous Coward]

It is 2007, where is the ubiquitous micropayment scheme we were promised?

Because now all of online payments are tied into your personal credit card and personal info. With identity theft, malware/spyware, etc., people are very leery about putting in a credit card number at every other website. If there was an anonymous credit/debit card with a 10 dollar value, people would be more inclined to pay 50 cents here and there for some extra content. If it was compromised, you be out 10 bucks, and that's it.

Do you want to screw around with your regular credit card and have some scumbag get your whole identity?

I thought so...

[SanityInAnarchy]

I thought so, too. Then I read this review of the EEE PC. I was with them right up until this bit:

For more advanced tasks, consider getting a full-fledged laptop with a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and Windows Vista.

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.

Second, and most important: Why the fuck are they recommending Windows Vista? I was curious, so I found this other page, with these gems:

Windows Vista offers an array of improvements over XP aside from visual enhancements, new multitasking features and simpler home-network setup....

And, of course, no mention of the downsides -- of why you'd want to keep XP. (Well, there's a sort of casual mention of "If Vista does nothing for you, you can still buy a new PC with XP", but no mention of the insane number of bugs that still exist in Vista.)

Microsoft offers three versions of Vista

No, it offers four.

Mac OS is considered by many to be easier to learn and use than Windows, and it's more secure against online threats because it's less of a target for malware writers.

Not to bring up the old debate again, but the fact that there is a debate is worth some mention, at least, right?

Linux, a free operating system with source code anyone can modify, is most appropriate for users who aren't intimidated by technology.... The only things you won't find are sophisticated 3D games.

Doom 3 isn't sophisticated? What about the new Unreal games?

Or did they mean "sophisticated" in the artsy/intellectual sense? As in, say, Neverwinter Nights, Neverball, Wesnoth, and the like?

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.

You'll need additional software to access other file formats such as MP3 or iTunes.

No mention that it's free and easy to download/install this software. Oh, and it does seem to support mp3s out of the box.

As for Linux, you'll need more than just a casual knowledge of operating systems, because the interface is not entirely graphical.

That's a nonsensical statement. It's "not entirely graphical" in the same way that Windows and OS X are -- I can still run cmd.exe or Terminal. If they mean that you may occasionally have to do things with the commandline, well, that's also untrue -- and they must know this, having used Ubuntu.

If all you do is Web browsing and e-mail you can probably get by, but if you use a wide variety of applications, you're better off passing on Linux.

If all you do is Web browsing and e-mail and word documents and finances and web development and education and PDF reading and listening to music and creating music and putting music on your iPod and basic camera and photo scanning/editing and CD/DVD burning and scanning/OCR and Skype and instant messaging and IRC..... *inhal

Re:I thought so...

[billcopc]

The day Linux is worth using for the average Joe, is the day I'll start rooting for it.

I'm not an MS fanboy, but XP gets the job done. If I could use my Linux desktop to do my work efficiently and without "mystery menus" whose feature has yet to be coded, then I would.

Right now, as a computer elitist (yes, a performance freak), I still see Linux as a rock-solid server OS, but a "toy" desktop, mostly because Xorg is still the backwards cesspool that X has always been. It's pretty sad when I have to say the NVidia-drivers package does more work for me than the actual Xorg configuration tools. Joe Random won't touch Xorg.conf with a ten foot pole, and neither should I under most circumstances.

What gets me is there are some really nice LiveCD distros out there with all the creature comforts like hardware detection, easy customization and intuitive prompts. Why can't the big disk-based distros follow suit ? We can't even get a decent package manager, save for Ubuntu's Single-Click Install.

Everyone likes to brag about their distro's unique features, but that's going against the spirit of open-source! What if I like Ubuntu's friendly desktop, but I prefer Gentoo's build system ? Why can't they play nice together ? Heck, most binary distros can't even play nice with custom-built packages without some major kludging.

There are many problems with Linux distros, some easy, some difficult. We need to get out of denial and start working on solutions. Linux can be awesome in the right hands, just look what Mac did with the outdated pile that is BSD. Linux can pwn that big time, but we need to stop inventing "yet another unfinished sourceforge project" and start putting our strengths together.

Re:I thought so...

[Random Destruction]

And then there are just as many of us who have had terrible time with vista. My aunt got a dell that came loaded with vista. She has a hard time reading the screen, so first thing I did was increase the text size. Apparently that requires a reboot. On the fourth attempt at booting, it decided not to lock up, and I got back to the interface. Everything was ugly and I couldn't move any window more than 2/3s across the screen. There was an invisible wall. So I set the text back, and rebooted again.

Then I went to copy her mail form outlook express to windows mail. I moved the proper files over from the other computer, and loaded windows mail. I pointed it to the files, and it spat out "file in use, or wrong file type" or some other such BS. I tried saving the DB in different formats etc. Eventually I discovered that what this error really meant was "Windows mail can't import user data as a user. Please re-run this program as administrator" why the fuck couldn't they just say that?

My experience with that box has continued in a similar vein. The computer is as slow as her old box, yet has 4 times the memory and at least that many times the processing power. I find it simply inconcievable anyone could run this OS.

That aside, people do. Smart people too, so there must be more to this equation. I'm not really sure what it is, but this polarized opinion is confusing.

Stick it to the Customer?

[zotz]

Is there another reason to charge as much for the online version as for the print version when, admittedly, their costs are less for the online customers.

If I were an "about to commit" customer, and I have thought about becoming one recently, this would put me off, I would like a good share of the savings passed on to me.

One simple solution:

Print subscription comes with (either a CD version or) an online account, online version is stand alone.

I am sure there must be better possibilities. But if they're happy...

all the best,

drew