WebProNews

Money for Content

The WSJ let the "our content will be free" story spread for months to generate public relations related coverage and to misdirect competitors before announcing that they are going to keep their subscription service: Mr. Murdoch made his latest comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in answering a question.

WSJ Will Not Abandon Subscription Model

If rumors are to be believed, the Wall Street Journal has been considering abandoning the subscription model for months. But alas, it’s not to be. Rupert Murdoch announced today that the Wall Street Journal, while expanding its free offerings, would not leave the subscription model. In fact, he stated that:

WSJ May Need Big Subscription Increase to Make Up Lost Revenue

The Wall Street Journal would have to increase traffic to their site by 12x to make up for the lost subscription revenue. WSJ.com is going from paid subscriptions to free online access. A report from Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang made the prediction based on advertising rates for banner ads.

News as a Commodity

In my last post about how contextual advertising targets the weak and poor, I promoted the idea of niche publishers shifting to sell niche products and services directly as a better means of monetization.

What Better Relevancy Can Google Come up With?

Google, already has a near infinite number of data points to compute relevancy for the active parts of the web, and is looking to gather even more user data information. The WSJ has background on the story:

Free WSJ Online Access Coming

Rupert Murdoch plans to make WSJ.com free to increase readership and generate far more in advertising. Right now the site gets 1 million viewers and Murdoch hopes to see it go to 15 million. For now a subscription just to the online edition is $79 for a year.

Digg This: Wall Street Journal Adds Buttons

Only one website's buttons appear on Wall Street Journal stories, inviting readers to share articles, and those buttons belong to Digg.

Google Drops Ads From Orkut

Advertising on social networks can be tricky. Google has found this out and has decided to remove all AdSense ads from it social network Orkut.

Selling Information Will Become a High Touch Industry

Newspapers Going Free The NYT just went free and likely the WSJ will follow. Once something goes free it is hard to start charging for it again - just ask Prince.

Sponsored Content Hosting and Renting Subdomains

Ads becoming content is not only true from a thin affiliate site perspective, but also on larger more traditional ad buys. Selling content hosting is going mainstream.