They’ve decided to shut down the paywall they had on many of the articles on their Web site. Why? They’re starting to realize that they could be making more money with advertising dollars then they are with subscribers. To quote an email that was forwarded my direction by Barney: “People will pay for what they want. But it’s looking more and more like advertisers will pay more to reach the right audience than the audience will pay to reach the right information.” Indeed.
Now if some folks up on Chandler Drive could realize the revenue that could be made (and the goodwill and good karma points they’d get) if they opened up their paywall, then we could start link to some of their stories now and again. While I love KTVZ and The Source and their stories, The Bulletin has a much larger staff and sometimes can cover stories that the others folks can’t do. The revenue that can be generated by having your stories indexed well in Google, Yahoo, etc… can be quite large, if you have a good ad sales team or Google Adsense-type ads placed right.
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I hate online subscriptions. What’s particularly irksome about the “folks on Chandler” (any relation to Otis Chandler?) is that I can’t access the full webisite even though I subscribe to the dead-trees paper. So I don’t link to them, and they lose some Google-juice. Maybe they’ll get a clue from the Grey Lady.
No relation to Otis(R.I.P.) and they don’t need a clue from the “Grey Lady.” They kick her ass in circulation trends.
It’s very frustrating to those of us who pay to have a real paper delivered to our door, but aren’t able to send a story to a friend unless we either make a copy (wasting more trees) or pay for an online subscription (wasting more money). Anyone know of another news outlet that follows the Bulletin’s practice? Funny, the Spokesman (owned by the same people) puts all their stuff online for free!
From what I know (having worked in the Advtsng Dept), they have a very solid paid subscription base.
All of the articles that used to be free still are; they added the extra articles for those that want to pay for it.
I wish that the upgrade to all articles were easily accessible, though, and I agree that they’d make a heck of a lot more money by selling ad space on each page than with online subscriptions.
If I see a headline that’s blocked by the pay-wall, I usually can find the topic on another website like Bend Weekly, KTVZ, or the Source.
I still scan the four free articles every morning, but get frustrated when the others are blocked and I have to seek them out on another site.