In a recent interview Rupert Murdoch, the owner of most of western-world's influential media, gave some interesting insights in how his media empire considers totally de-indexing their sites from Google in order to make more paid subscribers.
What caught my attention was his statement that there is not enough advertisement in the whole world to make all websites profitable, and that a subscription based model is much better source of revenue in the long run. RM is long enough in the business and the man behind world's most powerful media, so although not an Internet marketing expert he nails the point many fail to see.
I often hear that millions of visits are the prime goal for many webmasters, in contrast to websites which are able to monetize couple of visits a day into millions of yearly revenue.
To the reporter question 'isn't Google also helping the news website by sending free search visitors?' RM clearly says:
"What's the point of having someone coming occasionally after they see a headline in Google [...] we would rather have fewer people coming, but pay!"
Here is the link to the whole interview from Sky News.
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TAGS:bing microsoft lang, clive james mary wakefield, mary wakefield keith park, mary wakefieldkeith park, seo worldpress prelovac, what isnt valuable
14 Comments
Very interesting post and comments. Still mulling it over in my mind. I don't think the effect will reach the small business internet marketing techniques...yet. Although Murdoch may only understand the old media I imagine his team of young computer gurus will have a substantial amount of input.
Must say also that your blog, posts, plugins, etc. are some of the best on the internet. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Elizabeth ! Murdoch understands business and media very well that's why I believe he has a clear vision of future of news sites.
Hi Vlad
I'm in two minds about this. Initially, I thought if you doesn't want anyone to look at anything, then don't be on the internet! It's a straightforward view because the internet is an open structure. How will people know you have content worth viewing without publicising it?
And there's the rub.
It's the same problem musicians (like myself, a long time ago when you were in nappies!) , have when trying to publicise their music. That is, as soon as it's out, it can be shared, and the money-making opportunities are gone. This is because the content of the music (and news) message is exactly the same as any message trying to publicise the same, so why buy when you've already got it?
Now though, two spanners has been thrown into the works.
Murdoch is using law to test this current working practice. If he's successful, then the hordes of people that I've seen may have some redress by some future internet techy mechanism that will need inventing to shore up Murdoch's win (that's still an if, though), to stop being scammed by a veritable deluge of con artists and sharks that now infest and breed like herrings on the internet. Things like Tooth Whitening, Acai Berry, Grant Scams, Payday Loans, Colon Cleansing. The list just grows and grows using the same shady tactics of cut, suck and run.
If it protects Murdoch's scummy empire (I don't think at all highly of the bloke, but I see his point), then the same tech solution can help others less rich than the non-tax-paying state-shifting Aussie.
Furthermore, the recent Microsoft action of permanently blocking 600k online gamers' machines gives a big pointer to future actions around all areas of copyright control, which in the end may help me and my old music and copyrights.
'Why buy it when you already have it?' is not the right question. People still buy newspapers and magazines although all information is available on Internet, even from the same publishers.
So the trick is really capturing the readers with value that can not be otherwise obtained, or at least not as easily.
If I want to monetize my site tomorrow, I can chose to either run some third party ads, for companies I have no connection, interest or passion for, or I can create a subscription model which will serve my articles to people who decided they are worth reading (I would certainly try to up the quality as well). So from my perspective I can clearly see the second option as a more alluring one, at least for the prospect of making your own business. I think the end reader would benefit as well.
Hi
People DO still buy print media, agreed. However, to take Murdoch's output in the UK, sales of the best selling daily "The Sun" are about a quarter what they were at the peak. When I was in the news trade, "The Sun" and "The Daily Mirror" each sold ~4million per day at 20p a go. This was in 1987 say. Now they can't manage that in total, and the street price is virtually the same!!.
Recently the Evening Standard in London has almost folded and across the Atlantic, all the major US papers are folding or cutting back on staff and resources - New York Times, SF Chronicle, Baltimore, Wash Post.....all of them.
Initially, all papers ventured onto the internet as it was "the done thing" to get some presence and generate some ad revenue that they were and are losing on their printed output.
Now of course, search engines pick it up, aggregators and personal news readers and RSS feeds merge it into a whole, so I say 'Why buy it when you already have it? is exactly the right question. Now they are losing on-line ad sales as well!
The only way out for them all is to act as a cartel and all agree to with-hold free information. Of course, as soon as one breaks ranks, the spell is broken. Cartels are illegal as well, but that's a different issue. So Murdoch is trying the legal way by testing it in the courts.
I still don't know the answer, and continue to think aloud, so forgive me, but as with music on Rapidshare and elsewhere, if the content is just words, pictures or sounds, these are all easily copyable by anyone to be broadcast into the web. So why pay for it when it's free? An executive at EMI or somewhere like that, was heard to say "How can you compete with free?".
And it's true.
Without wishing to sound disparaging, you may be able to charge for your content and you may have reasonably popular websites (I know, I read you!), but you cannot compare your websites, or mine, with things like Murdoch's. It's not comparing like with like. At the end of the day, someone, grimy journalists usually, has to tread the streets looking for stories. Globally. They have to be paid to do it, or else there's no news and then everyone will be just dreaming up stories, re-hashing old articles until there's nothing left, and we'll all end up in a void where the only news will be facile and cheap celebrity comment.
Then, the bad guys in the world will easily take over as no-one will know about anything, and free speech will be a pointless exercise because no-one will know what to object against.
Tried to write a sensible comment but was constantly distracted by your last sentence. So, you say it is the good guys who rule now? I am not as optimistic.
No Vladimir.
I'm just imagining forward to a time when there might be no news reporting, no matter how bad it is. All I'm saying is that if there are no "real" news reporting systems (which, by definition, must be paid for somehow as everyone works for money, don't they?), then there will be no checks and balances on nefarious activities.
I'm also not saying that the good guys rule. Like you, I'm quite pessimistic about things because there have been so many black episodes in our joint European history over the last century. And if there is no free, competitive press (because they can't afford to run), and the only information is via some mass media system probably under state control, then there is no opportunity for an alternative view.
Even though I despise Murdoch and his papers, FoxNews etc, his points are still valid.
I think we are pulling on the same oar here, and I have a very dystopic vision that sometimes that brings me down. It's only because I'm intensely aware of history and the bad things that have happened. Sorry that you felt distracted!
n.b. I have a tendency to think aloud on-line. This could be the cause of numerous distractions, and it's not deliberate, but more likely some cathartic self analysis going on! Sometimes, the route that we arrive at a conclusion is just as interesting as the conclusion, don't you think?
Honestly I think we are at the moment where things are already as bad as they can get. So while I dislike what I see now I am conservatively optimistic about the future (I might not live to see it though).
Vladimir
Yousaid "things are already as bad as they can get"......You could be right there.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8359288.stm
This quite large read is from Clive James, a noted journalist and author who in this piece is bemoaning the ignorance of some senior journalists and editors in the major print (and therefore, online) media! And it is, as you say and how James describes, about as bad as it gets.
Specifically, he zooms in on the words of a well-know writer which went,
She published all this without doing any research and just chose to say it because it sounded good and funny - or something.
In essence then, James' piece bemoans her ignorance and her lack of professionalism which has been subsumed into the 'trite celebrity comment' sort of world. He also very clearly and without any of his normal joyous frivolity tells her and us that without Park, she'd be writing in German, if at all!
n.b. Park was in charge of a certain part of the RAF during WW2, which effectively stopped the Germans in their tracks which people in the UK call "The Battle of Britain", leaving the way open for Great Britain's later use as a huge aircraft carrier and use as the platform for the assault from the west, eventually ousting of the Nazis from Europe as part of the two-pronged attack. (Their are many versions and what-if's about what Stalin would have done if Britain had fell, so I won't go into it).
If ever there was turning point in history, September 15th 1940 is that day, because on that day Britain had every plane in the air and had no reserves. If the Germans had discovered this fact, things might have turned out very differently.
Now it's a simple thing these days to find out almost anything on the web. That writer, the target of James' piece, couldn't even be bothered!
Oops.
I meant to insert the object of Clive James' derision. It's here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-wakefield-sex-education-classes-are-the-last-thing-young-children-need-1816567.html
There are plenty of comments lower down pulling out exactly the same ideas of crass writing and ignorance.
Nice find and as one of the readers rightfully commented 'Since when did ignorance become a point of view?'
On a side note, being quite passionate about history, my view on why Germans lost BoB would be failure to realize the tremendous power of radar arrays. Information is everything, was back then and so it is now.
"Information is everything". How true. You pulled out exactly the same comment that attracted my attention. Those comments lower down below the article in "The Independent", I thought were very heart-warming as it showed that there are still a few attentive, thoughtful and aware people about who actually think beyond Kylie's hair colour. Sometimes it feels as if you're in a club of one!
Thanks for putting this post up Vladimir. It's certainly got the old brain going!
Murdoch may be the biggest media baron but he is a long way from owning most of the world's media and that is his problem--if the Guardian, the New York Times, the BBC etc., keep their sites open then he won't get many subscribers. Murdoch has shown he understands the old media but many are not so sure he understands the new world. We will see!
He doesn't need to get everyone paying, just the readers interested in content produced by his network such is for example the Wall Street Journal. I think he is a very clever guy and knows what he is doing.