Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Newspapers online: A lot for a little

I found this interesting and thought I would share...

Newspaper Web sites attracted a record 68.3 million unique visitors in the third quarter of 2008, equal to 41.4 percent of all American Internet users, according to newspaper Association of America. However, they have yet to monetize their online readership.

What's the answer? How can newspaper's make money online?

Well, don't ask me!

I'm stumped.

Other than advertising - which is becoming more and more difficult to secure - how can newspapers make money through their web sites? They can't charge people to visit their sites as readers will simply go elsewhere for their news (this is already proven in the fact that many newspapers that used to charge for archived stories now offer dated stories free of charge).

I'm sure someone will come up with a wonderful, groundbreaking idea at some point (see: YouTube). But, when? And, what?

Do you guys have any ideas?

1 comment:

Suzanne Levinson said...

Actually You Tube loses a lot of money. It's VERY expensive to host and stream video.