AFR.com site to relaunch
Fairfax ‘got it wrong’ on afr.com
“We got it wrong at the outset,” said David Kirk, Fairfax Media CEO.
Mr Kirk said the relaunch, which would occur soon, was due to the site not attracting enough subscribers.
Mr Gill has constantly defended Fairfax’s approach to the AFR’s website, saying it was the best way to commercialise Fairfax’s content.
Unlike most newspaper websites in which content is available free, to access stories written by AFR writers on the site costs between $25 a month and $150/month depending on the subscription level.
This follows
Murdoch making the case for free WSJ online
Murdoch said making the site, which currently charges an annual subscription fee of $99, freely available online would help boost viewership–and revenue–globally.
“‘If you make it free, it will hurt the paper’–I don’t think so,” he told investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia media conference in New York.
But the fee has hindered the business from attracting an even wider audience globally. That has restricted online advertising, whose rates are set based on the number of viewers.
And earlier…
NY Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”
On Friday, Mr Gill confirmed to The Australian that the site was being relaunched “in a matter of weeks”.
Hope for them all the best on the new site.
