How About Free? The Price Point That Is Turning Industries on Their Heads: There's an old joke about a businessman who gives away his products. A customer asks: "How do you make money doing that?" He answers: "I make it up on volume."It's nonsensical, yes. But a funny thing has happened: Giving away the product has become a legitimate business model on the Internet and even beyond. [...]
Newspapers and magazines, saddled with high fixed costs and high distribution costs, have been hit by both the free culture online and the ease with which their product -- which is costly to produce but easy to copy and paste -- is hijacked by free sites put together by unpaid bloggers. [...]
"The last thing you want to do is get people addicted to free. If you're going to go free, you ought to expect that it is going to be the price forever"
Newspapers in Crisis: Migrating Online: Newspaper advertising revenues in the US declined 16.4% in 2008 to $37.9 billion. By 2012, spending will slide to $28.4 billion. Is there hope for this proud medium? [...]
And there is little relief online, where newspaper revenues are dropping as well. eMarketer estimates that even Internet revenues dipped slightly in 2008, 0.4% to $3.15 billion
MediaNews unit sets plans for tailored news [...] in an undisclosed market.
The project, dubbed I-News, will deliver targeted and customized newspaper content to subscribers via their home desktop computers, said Peter Vandevanter, MNG's vice president of targeted products.
