It’s going to cost you to read yesterday’s news at GoDanRiver. Again.
Starting this past Tuesday (we’ll talk about that later in the article), The Danville Register & Bee’s website (GoDanRiver.com) is putting in a paywall again. That means that you’ll need a subscription of some sort to read articles on their website.
You’ll get to read 15 articles a month for free, so don’t panic. After that it’s just a low introductory offer monthly price. After that low introductory price expires, you’ll get a higher introductory price. After that higher introductory price, you’ll be paying the same amount of money to access the website that you’d pay to actually get home delivery of the newspaper. All righty.
If you pay for 7-day home delivery of the newspaper, you get access to their website for free. Confused yet? Me too.
I’ll add to the confusion by pointing out all of this started five days ago but it hasn’t started yet. Has your head exploded yet?
If you pay for 7-day home delivery of the newspaper and get your free access to their website, you’ll also get a digital copy of the newspaper every day. That means you’re paying for a bunch of paper to get access to their website at no additional cost, and now you’re getting a digital copy of the newspaper which means that you really didn’t need the piles of paper around your house that you’re now paying for to actually read the newspaper. Right now, I’m imagining Nancy Pelosi saying “We need to pass the bill so that we can see what’s in the bill buy the actual newspaper so that we can see what’s in the newspaper although we don’t need the actual newspaper once we buy it.”
And if you haven’t taken your Prozac yet, once the introductory offers are gone, it will cost more to access their website without buying the newspaper than if you bought the 7-day home delivery package. I CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, PEOPLE!
Here’s their Frequently Asked Questions page. Note that “What in the hell are you doing? Have you lost your minds?” is not a Frequently Asked Question that they choose to answer.
Here’s the pricing page for all of your subscription options. Note that it has more options than the Obamacare Health Exchange does. Also note that just like Obamacare… if you like your newspaper subscription, you can keep your newspaper subscription. That worked so well for Obamacare, didn’t it? It will probably end up the same way here.
This was supposed to start on Tuesday, July 22nd. Apparently it’s not quite ready for use yet but it could start any day. Or it may not. You may remember that the Register & Bee tried a paywall system out before in their Media General ownership days and that was quickly scrapped. There was an easy way to work around that paywall system and there will probably be another easy way to get around this one that’s started but hasn’t started but could start if you buy the newspaper that you really didn’t want but you had to buy to get… oh I give up.
This is going to be hilarious when their pageviews plummet and advertisers don’t get the results they’ve been previously getting from their banner ads. SouthsideCentral is making the transition to have advertisers (but there won’t be anything obnoxiously flashing and popping up) and we’ll be glad to offer the GoDanRiver advertisers a lot more value for their money. Our readers aren’t going to have to pay to read our content and our readership numbers continues to grow.
Hmm. Come to think of it, I now highly endorse the Register & Bee’s idea of putting in a paywall. It’s going to be great for our business.
I figured this was coming. Warren Buffett is the richest man who has no idea how technology works, and he apparently loves a paywall.
I know a little bit about making money on the internet and I can say that this will not work for them. It is not a viable business model for the internet. The problem is that they are going to have a small customer base that they are charging a small amount of money from. That translates into little revenue. The only way to make money on the internet is to try to charge a small number of people a lot of money or to give away all content for free and make money from the advertisers. They simply will not generate enough customers paying the small amount of money to make enough to make it successful for them.
Say they somehow got 5k people in the area to pay for digital access for $9.95. That turns into about $50,000. That may sound like a lot, but that is not much revenue for a newspaper having to pay reporters and their building, and all the expenses…. And they will be lucky to get 500 people really.
Also they have too many ads and popups on their site right now – which makes results for those advertising dismal and makes the site practically unusable for visitors.
Don’t worry, most ACA folks cant afford a paper anyway. For some, it would be nice to have something like this to gripe about. Papers still more consistent than the bowels of most, surely. Time to go, internet is dodgy on this free celly.
Of all the absurdities that characterize today’s Register/Bee, the silliest is the newspaper’s incessant campaign begging home delivery customers to voluntarily pay their delivery person extra to cover their gas costs. This means the newspaper knows it cannot charge enough for the product to deliver it and/or they under-pay their drivers and must beg the customer to make up the shortfall.
There’s no business principle involved in any of it–just aimless wandering in a quagmire of confusion and mixed signals.
Are you kidding me? They ask for you to cover their employees’ business expenses as a favor?
No wonder that nobody does that job for long. And they’re “contractors” (allegedly) to add to that ridiculousness.
agree
The notice appeared on the R/B website this morning that I had 2 articles remaining out of my 15 before I would have to buy a subscription. There is no explanation of the options, etc. This is August 2nd, I was out of town all day yesterday and looked at one article this morning. I sent an email to the publisher (I’m sure he could care less) that after digging under the bushes for my newspaper every day and having to let it dry out to read on rainy days, I would just get my news from Southside Central and The Star Tribune.
Update: I was surprised to get a timely reply from my email. I was assured that someone would contact me regarding my delivery issues and that all I would have to do to continue reading the online edition is set up an account (at no cost since I subscribe). And, I got the dog and pony about the quality of the R/B reporting, etc. Let’s see how long it takes to get that call about my delivery and no I won’t be setting up that account.
They’re in full defense mode now.
FYI: I’ve already broken through the paywall.
At least this iteration of the paywall isn’t so easily defeated. Goodbye, newspaper.
I’ve already busted through it. 😀
[…] Happy Trails, Register & Bee paywall (at least for now)! I had a good feeling that the paywall policy would fail yet again, and it seems like it has. […]
tired of this bs… no thanks, R&B… I’ll put my money towards another more substantive paper. You can keep your paywall.
No doubt it will fall again. If it had anything in it it would be worth it. There are also ways around it.