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Newsday Gets 35 Subscriptions To Pay Web Site
Hugh Pickens writes "In late October, Newsday put its web site behind a pay wall, one of the first non-business newspapers to take the pay wall plunge, so Newsday has been followed with interest in media circles anxious to learn how the NY Times own plans to put up a pay wall may work out. So how successful has Newsday's paywall been? The NY Observer reports that three months into the experiment only 35 people have signed up to pay $5 a week to get unfettered access to newsday.com. Newsday's web site redesign and relaunch reportedly cost about $4 million and the 35 people who've signed up have earned Newsday about $9,000. Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic. 'That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been,' said Jimenez to his assembled staff, according to five interviews with Newsday employees. The web project has not been a favorite among Newsday employees who have recently been asked to take a 10 percent pay cut. 'The view of the newsroom is the web site sucks,' says one staffer. 'It's an abomination,' adds another."
Ha! Take that long standing respectable media. Funny, I'd bet they'd be better off without a website at all. Now there is a way to fix this, though I'm interested in feedback before I try to do anything about it. What we need is a micro-payment aggregation service combined with an advertisement blocking proxy server. Opera is doing the rebuilding on the fly for smaller and faster page loads, and if they combined that with an ad-blocking service for $10/yr and had a "$.02" payment button that sites like Newsday could contract for, then everybody would win.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Nobody is going to pay for a news site for the most part. You can easily get the same news elsewhere for free. The only places I've seen people pay for something like this is cable TV. The reason for that is because you had too to get all the major content.
The reason you can't do that with websites is that any old Joe can't create a TV station, but they can create a news website. If Newssite1.com makes you pay, everyone will go to Newssite2.com to get the same information free.
For the record, they sell access to the web site for $5 per week, while they sell the paper for $4.50 including access to the web site. Basically those 35 subscribers are paying 50 cents per day to not get the paper delivered. They also give free access to all people who subscribe to the local cable provider -- which is a lot of people for the local paper.
Plus it's Newsday.....
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The information is lost in a colour heavy design, using what looks suspiciously like a stock template. How this cost $4million I'd love to know.
The design and funnel was conducted clearly by someone with no experience in subscription sites - getting someone to pull out their credit card is a lot harder than just blocking full access - the prejoin page is a mess, and it's not clear with a 5 second page read, let alone a glance, what the options are. If it takes 5 seconds you've lost most people.
What they need is a clean site, black on white, with a clear uncluttered explanatory presign page - heck a 'letter from the editor' is probably a good idea at this time - and considerably more visible information and _news_ on the front page.
I design and manage Adult paysites, but the principles are essentially the same - particularly the 5-second rule.
That's how I have heard this categorized here in the NY area. See, if you are a Cablevision/Optimum Online sub, you get Newsday Online for free. "That's a $260 Value -- If You Sign Before Midnight Tonight!"
Remember, Newsday is owned by The Dolans, the certifiably insane family that also owns and/or operates Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, the Rangers, the Liberty, Clearview Cinemas, the Beacon Theater, Radio Friggin' Music Hall, and prolly my toaster oven as well, haven't checked lately. This isn't about love or money for the newspaper, this is about things like "synergies" and "paradigms" and "leverage." These are the kind of robber baron sociopaths who would burn an orphanage they own to the ground if the price of diapers got higher than they had budgeted, or they needed to light a lot of their cigars at once and they only had one match left.
So the potential regional market is only 1/4 the size that it otherwise might have been? Think, without these other access deals, they might have gotten 140 people to sign up.
It's a terribly designed site. At first glance, you can't tell what are links, and what is just plain text. There are just about zero visual clues as to where you should go, what you should do, or what you should be reading. There seems to be no coherent logic to the layout, either, and the dark background with white text does them no favours. If they paid $4 million for this, they got ripped off.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Before making a website pay-only, the producer really has to ask: what's the market?, not "what's this service worth? So long as the rest of the market requires no payment, there's not a hope in hell of getting any significant customer base. The only chance you might, possibly, have is to somehow change the market you're in. Going from a news service - of which there are many: all the same, to an analysis or insider site might just do it, but I doubt that many people would recognise the distinction.
As it is, this site has got one very valuable asset that few other websites have: a list of people willing to pay good money for something that everyone else gets for free. That's gotta be worth a fortune.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
All well and good, but if they are spending $9mil on a website that is only going to be accessible to people who are ALREADY paying for their articles via the printed paper....what's the point? They just spent $9mil to allow their current readers to read the same articles online as well. Excellent business model. They were obviously expecting to make revenue from the paywall, but instead they are proving that the paywall model does not work well. Granted a paper with a larger circulation would have more paywall subscribers by default, but if the percentages remained similar it would still not be worth the investment. It will be interesting to see how larger news sites respond to this.
Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic.
I submit that publisher Terry Jimenez has less business saavy than a 10-pound bag of fertilizer.
I have a bad feeling about this...
$260 a year for access to a B-list newspaper site? Really? The Wall Street Journal online only is $110/year ant they're The Wall Street Journal.
Good luck.
All well and good, but if they are spending $9mil on a website that is only going to be accessible to people who are ALREADY paying for their articles via the printed paper....what's the point?
Oh I don't know, something crazy like attempting to increase the value of their service to their customers (by this I mean the attempt to redesign their website, not specifically the paywall). But who cares about things like improving your product these days?
They just spent $9mil to allow their current readers to read the same articles online as well. Excellent business model.
FYI the "fine" summary stated $4 million, not $9 million. Yet what's 5 million dollars between friends, right pal? Anyway, even if the redesigned website allows them to better retain their current customers or add new ones (for the actual print addition or for the parent company's other subscription services) it can be worth it in the long run. IMHO the only totally boneheaded part of their change was implementing the paywall.
They were obviously expecting to make revenue from the paywall, but instead they are proving that the paywall model does not work well. Granted a paper with a larger circulation would have more paywall subscribers by default, but if the percentages remained similar it would still not be worth the investment. It will be interesting to see how larger news sites respond to this.
Now this part I agree with. They apparently thought that a significant portion of the people that use their website but aren't their local customers, or subscribers to Cablevision, would bother with the paywall. However, unless they only had 100 or so non-subscriber visitors (possible but unlikely), it hasn't panned-out that way. So it will be interesting to see what lessons, if any the "big guys" take away from this episode.
Backup, servers, and bandwidth all require manpower to keep them operational. I take it *you* don't work in the IT industry.
And the performance question is separate from the "do I like how this looks question," which is what everyone looks at when asking if this site was worth 4 million. Whatever that money went into, most of it was probably not UI design, and this is natural and understandable for a site of that size.