If You Make A Mistake With A Paywall, It Can Linger For A Long Time
from the psychological,-not-navigational dept
Scott Rosenberg has a column up at The Guardian where he discusses Salon's experience with a paywall back at the beginning of the decade, highlighting how the damage from a paywall can be a lot more troubling than many people take into account. He points out that Salon's various paywall experiments did bring in some revenue, but they then limited Salon's growth potential, first by confusing users on how they could get access to Salon content, and then with the psychological belief that Salon couldn't be read without paying:More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is "closed" to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.Indeed. As an early reader of Salon, I used to read it all the time -- and link to it. But as I got more and more confused over whether or not anyone reading Techdirt could read the links, I was less and less inclined to ever write about Salon stories -- and eventually that resulted in me dropping Salon as a source I read as well.
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Filed Under: paywalls, psychology, salon
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Ditto on Salon
Today, I never visit Salon and I actually assumed they were out of business. Sad.
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Re: Ditto on Salon
One can only hope that entertainers like Glen Beck slide down the paywall into oblivion where they belong. Google is making a huge mistake in accommodating News Corp and others. If the site doesn't want Google to index it and drive traffic to them, fine. Modify robots.txt to tell Google to go away.
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Re: Re: Ditto on Salon
Google is, as a good for-profit business should, acting in its own self-interest.
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Oh
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Oh well. Seems that Rupert and his political prowess want to control the news. But don't take my word for it. Just watch how he attempts to control the political narrative like a second generation weasel sent to a Penal Colony would do-
Start watching about 7 minutes in-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428
NewsCorp must be a bad work environment.
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Re:
I noticed that WSJ re-erected their paywall yesterday
Wait - re-erected? I thought WSJ still had a paywall.
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Paywalls and google news
"I know that there are some commercial news sites that Google indexes who feel that people should not be able to read their content for free. I would like to be able to configure my preferences so that I don't have to see their "teaser" blurbs. I prefer to go from Google directly to the information I'm looking for, and I am never looking for a teaser blurb or a registration only site."
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Re: Paywalls and google news
To specifically exclude results pointing to a specific site that would otherwise be returned by a Google search, click on CustomizeGoogle -> Options (for Firefox on Linux, it is under the Tools menu). Then in the left sidebar of the dialog that comes up, click Filters. In the right side, you can enumerate those sites that Google should never present in search results. The dialog shows you how to use wildcards in crafting your filters.
I have a fairly large list of excluded sites that makes my search results more productive.
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And now the ads are terrible
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Other types cause psychologocal damage
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Re: Other types cause psychologocal damage
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Re: Re: Other types cause psychologocal damage
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Salon had little choice, they were going broke, if I remember correctly.
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hmm
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Re: hmm
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Re: hmm
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salon is free now?
Well, maybe I can check out salon again. :)
F
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New York Times too
Paywalls are stupid -- and the idjits who think they will save their publishing business are in the wrong business.
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Yes, with so many free news alternatives, people will generally choose the free over the paid one, even if the free one isn't as good, but is good enough.
Good old Rupe may have killions, but doesn't have killions of brain cells. It's good to hear that about him; anything that will reduce his readership is manna to me.
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NYT
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pay walls...
You're just smarter about building the wall and defining it.
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Re: pay walls...
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Re: pay walls...
No, a paywall is a situation where you are given an option to pay for existing content. There have been companies that paid us to create special content for them, but it was for them alone, and they own that content. There is no paywall whereby anyone else can pay to access it.
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hey, Salon learned and corrected its mistake
In short, Mike, you ought to go back to reading Salon. Just a suggestion from a friend and fan.
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That's exactly it
I used to love reading Salon articles, and I probably would have paid for the privilege. It's just that after the paywall, Salon just wasn't "there" anymore.
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Interesting Site
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