Free stuff is actually going away in this recession
May 8th, 2009 | by mbhunter |Caught this yesterday via Slashdot:
News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch
In August I wrote about this, and it looks like it’s happening. So, is Rupert Murdoch going to roll out subscription fees for his companies’ news sites just because he’s a greedy capitalist? Well, yeah, sure, but it’s also because earnings have dropped like a stone: quarterly profits went from $216 million to a miniscule $7 million, year on year. And if the Wall Street Journal can thrive under a subscription model, why not his?
Advertising budgets are being slashed all over the place, which includes, increasingly, online advertising budgets. The model of “give away valuable stuff to get eyeballs, clicks, and conversions on the adjacent ads” that works so well when money is flowing becomes a liability when the money isn’t flowing. It’s more than a little challenge to convince people to pay for stuff that they’ve come to expect for free. (Pay per tweet, anyone? Yah right.)
But it’s a real issue: How do online services make money if the advertising goes away? If they know, then they survive. If not, they don’t. They can’t.
One Response to “Free stuff is actually going away in this recession”
By Big Mike St Louis on Sep 6, 2009 | Reply
Free stuff is coming back but
it wont be like before
and this might be good
so people wont expect free
and maybe they will start spending more
money online.