That was some Astronomy Humor, right there…

They had up sells and add-ons, not to mention display advertising. Plus, the benefit of people having built communities that were not so easily moved.

As you can see from this compete.com chart, they’ve lost half their traffic since charging for the basic site.

Now I don’t begrudge them making a profit, but they didn’t add any additional value. Just decided to start charging.

Are you getting ready to charge us, ‘ole cuzin Andy?

Sorry Andy, they’re not just selling the news.

They’re selling the newest news.
They’re also selling (via their brand & reputation) “the truth”.

The newest, truest, most important news.

Information is everywhere and free, so what’s important and who do you trust?

Who will sort through it all for you? For a small fee?

They don’t even have to spend time and content trying to convince the user or back every little snippet of their info up with charts and graphs…this has already supposedly been done…by them…for why would they jeopordize their reputation?
There’s watchdogs in place, and people’s jobs on the line, right?

When was the last time a news reporter tried to convince you of something?
They just TELL you what’s just happened. Gimme the good stuff…ahhhh

Up to the minute, occuring anywhere…all their information channels are in place.

Just like any 15 year old kid sitting on the youtube homepage hitting F5 for the latest posts….who noone’s listening to and noone would believe.

This is the only reason the information that’s broadcast still has any weight to it.

The disturbing thing is that it’s just gonna go up up up up up up up up up up in price for those consumers that believe that mainstream media is the only “true” source.

‘Cause really, the whole model of selling the advertising space that reaches their users and subscribers comes from them, so it’s not like they’re not doing THAT already.

I AGREE that their model sucks!

Love your stuff btw!

Mark

Guy Kawasaki collected up blog posts and published an entire book of those blog posts. He says considerable work went into this and I believe him, but the essence of the book (titled: “Reality Check”) was repurposed blog posts.

NYT journalists and analysts could come up with some repurposed or even hybrid content that would be “all in one place” i.e. an eBook. With an enormous staff of creatives, NYT could fairly easily and quickly include appealing layouts, images, perhaps even a bit of audio or video INSIDE the eBook.

Many possibilities here that their readers would pay small change for ($7 up to $147 perhaps) but with so many readers and this marketed correctly, they should make some decent $ on this. Their existing viewers and not shunned away by charging for content overall and those who want quality content aggregated with an appealing look will be okay on paying for it.

I’m choking too on the possibilities. Stop trying to solve your money problems NYT with broad strokes and appeal to what folks want on the net by slicing and dicing your way back to viability. Not sure why I spent the time here helping them solve this as I (and millions of others) consider their news ethics to have eroded. But hey, Andy asked…

When there was no web, and I got a newspaper every day, I flipped through every page in the content sections of the paper, scanning for stuff I wanted to read. They got to show me ads on every page as I flipped through the paper. A lot of the content was of no interest to me, but enough was of interest to enough people to get them to subscribe, and all those extra pages were an opportunity to sell advertising.

Now, I scan the stories on news aggregator sites like Google News. I still read the stories that appeal to me, but the news “paper” can’t show me ads unless I read *their* story.

The big shift is over:
1) We find the stories we want to read in a different way – the newspaper is no longer the portal to the news.
2) The basic “unit” is no longer a page or a section of the newspaper, it’s a story – and everyone has the same news stories.

ESPN has a working model for premium content combined with free news content – their “Insider” membership is an easy, cheap decision for those who want all of the analysis, rumors, etc. News “papers” like the New York Times have the resources to create premium content, but the best way to sell that premium content is to relentlessly drive people to your free content.

ESPN has a number of advantages the the NYT doesn’t have, because unlike ESPN, NYT can’t repurpose the same content for television, radio, and web. NYT has one channel (print) that’s shrinking and bleeding money, and they haven’t figured out how to make money on the web.

But damn, how hard could it be? They only need to make few pennies per visit, no?

The goals
1. Get subscribers
2. Sell the stories
3. Sell ad space by the inch or by the page and everything in-between.

The problem today is papers have lost focus they need to understand convergence, demographics and psychographic then capitalize using readership count. Do sell subscription to the end user, sell the end users eye time on your site PPV ads. The NYT can make money from users clicking on ads PPC or email updates with ads. Know your users and profit..

Problem solved please send payment to pay pal. Haha

Ger

Sorry, we would like to charge you now. Forget what we used to say.

I would not give them two cents.

As the late Jim Rohn stated; “It all comes down to the value that we bring to the market place”.

My marketing thoughts would be for them to offer a limited free edition, but charge for the complete version. This tactic may lead the free readers into paying readers.