Comments on: If that’s how paywalls work then we’re utterly flipping screwed

By: MattP

MattP — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:09:19 +0000

A gold star for Mr Denmore

By: Mr Denmore

Mr Denmore — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:50:18 +0000

You could build a book on bad management based purely on the AFR’s misadventures on the web. As someone who was involved with the whole thing up to a few years ago, I can say it was always a rolling disaster.

What people don’t appreciate, though, is that’s the way they want it. (Edited by Mumbrella for legal reasons).

The strategy, such as it is, is to keep the board happy that they are doing amazing things in new media, while grimly protecting the no-growth, but still fat EBIT margins offered by the print edition. So it’s a defensive strategy. They don’t WANT to make it easy for you to find stuff online.

But if they can take a few hundred bucks off you in the meantime, they’re not complaining.

That’s the whole story.

By: Graham Hedley

Graham Hedley — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:15:09 +0000

This is not really very useful. In fact you guys (above) might like to ask yourselves if this sort of nonsense is not the very reason that valuable info will be in paid channels?

By: Inky

Inky — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:00:58 +0000

krangsquared : What species of idiot executes a news website in Flash?

By: fly by wire

fly by wire — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:44:11 +0000

Fairfax are just too embarrassed to reveal how many/few afr.com subs have been lured to part with their hard earned – like Tim. They’ve ploughed north of $20m into Gill’s ego trip, so even if you use today’s popular number of 7,000 subs, that’s an investment of nearly $3,000 per sub. After nearly four years (and three re-launches), that’s a very Fairfax-like return on investment. McCarthy obviously feels hamstrung about how to deal with the mess. Can’t pitch it. Can’t ditch it.

By: krangsquared

krangsquared — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:09:05 +0000

The people running AFR always seemed to have this assumption that just because News Ltd didn’t have any equivalent publication, that they had the market for business news all to themselves and could ignore whatever else was happening around them. That the content was so authoritative and exclusive, that big business would always want their access and would never ever unsubscribe.

They went with this expensive revamp of the site to convert it from HTML to Flash a couple of years ago. And now they’ve revamped it from Flash to HTML. What a waste of money.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:55:27 +0000

Surely it’s the AFR you despise Tim?

By: mumbrella

mumbrella — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:39:05 +0000

Hi Chris,

You’d better point me towards those other rants about paywalls you’re thinking of. I remain open minded and I don’t think I’ve ever said otherwise. But hey, prove me wrong. Unlike the AFR, my archive’s all yours…

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

By: Chris George

Chris George — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:03:15 +0000

Hang on there. This looks like ranting bitch #399999 on this subject Tim. Surely Dave has a point? Certainly it has appeared that you do quite despise them and so on. And here you are whining in a quite awful way because you encountered a bug?

By: Blatant Plug

Blatant Plug — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:30:26 +0000

Save yourself the $109 a month Tim, be good to see you more on our pages.

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:38:08 +0000

Can we not say (not talking about the technical issues, that’s very frustrating yes I agree) that we’re continuing to chart unchartered waters and everyone is going to make mistakes, everyone is going to try different things to see what works and what doesn’t work?

We’ve had everything for free for so long now, but why should we continue to receive everything for free, unfortunately the free world revolves around money. We have created this monkey ourselves and now as an industry we should be supporting each other, we used to have to pay for everything I don’t see why everyone thinks that it’s okay to have everything for free.

It will take time to work things out, see what works, what doesn’t … it’s big change that’s occurring for everyone.

This is just a general statement, I’ve never worked in magazines or newspapers so I don’t have any knowledge of people, culture, etc. I just think we should be a bit more supportive (frustrating technical issues aside) of the changing dynamics and way forward.

By: kellyu

kellyu — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:58:04 +0000

Oh dear, we have a winner.

SMH iPad app to be $4.50 a week. (http://www.mediaspy.org/report.....-ipad-app/)

I see no buyers of that.

By: Riarn

Riarn — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:02:53 +0000

This example was a little thin to describe the downfalls of paid content. Technical error? Welcome to the pain of every telco customer. People pay for products which have shitty tech support all the time. But its a necessary evil. If you want the product, tech support wont get in your way.
However, why do you want that product anyway? There is nothing on the afr.com.au site which is so unique you cant get it elsewhere for free, and with less hassles.
Subscriptions to news sites if for the mums and dads who have no idea how to research properly for themselves and want the convenience of one access point.
Which when you think about it, paid content is introducing a model into a dying market. In 10 years when everyone will have basic internet search skills (thanks to the advances in Google and internet freedom of access) paying for this service will be moot.

By: mumbrella

mumbrella — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:28:14 +0000

Hi Dave,

Newspapers were my first love, and always will be. I loved my years in them and will always be grateful for the skills they gave me.

Sometimes I despair of them, but I’ll never despise them.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

By: Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:20:40 +0000

Dino does have a point Tim. You did pay for something from someone you clearly despise.