Hearld Sun Superfoooty Pay Wall goes up.

[Pessimistic]

Super point.

Bottom line is most knowledgeable footy fans have just about had a gutfull of the "Robbo's and Mark Steven's" writing opinion pieces. Case in point this morning. Robbo trolling on about Carlton winning the flag. They may give it a nudge, but honestly, he at one point declares them a lock. Unless they have a couple f gun key forwards we dont know about, he's kidding himself...

So Id sooner not read his crap full stop, let alone pay for it... Bigfooty... getting better by the minute.

Thats the "hardest hitting opinion in footy" you are talking about there !!

I wonder what clarko thinks of that

 

[Chief]

Im sure those such as myself who write reviews for our clubs boards would be happy for these to be posted on the News Site.

Even though mine are generally drunken ramblings of a madman.

What we might do is link to the board reviews at the end of the BFN reports.

 

[theflea]

what is even worse is im a yearly h-sun subscriber and i still have to pay for content.i reckon if you pay for the home delivered sun you should get this included.

 

[MarcusP2]

what is even worse is im a yearly h-sun subscriber

You're right, that is terrible.

 

[Dont be a lemon]

Herald Sun is a newspaper that makes you feel dumber.

 

[fairdinkum]

We tried to get AFL Media Accreditation but got knocked back. It's also becoming increasingly hard to get interviews with Telstra putting up a wall of exclusivity through their club contacts.

I would be very interested to hear more about this, especially the bolded bit.

How did you go about trying to get accreditation? Did they give you a reason for knocking you back? Who/which outlets actually have this accreditation?

I always cheer for the little guy, and is this instance, it looks like I might be cheering for the Chief, the most stable genius,, if it turns out the Big Media/Big Business have had anything to do with BFN getting knocked back.

 

[fairdinkum]

And thirdly, web ads are costly taking up bandwidth space.

Where do you think the ads are served from: News' own servers, or separate servers dedicated to delivering ads on different sites? And how much bandwidth do you think is chewed up by these tiny little ads?

 

[scottwade]

Online ad revenue is vastly, vastly over-rated.

Guess you won't be applying for any shares in the Facebook offering then?

 

[Taco]

Compare The Tackle to locally-produced, passionate, loved, free content like this:

http://www.bigfootynews.com/2012/03/grinners-and-moaners-nab-cup-week-3/

There really is no comparison - The Tackle is significantly better.

E.g.

However, the latter is aoblem for the future, with Collingwood’s younger brigade struggling time and again through the NAB Cup.

And that 'Order of the felines' article really is terrible. Richmond staked their finals claim today? Delusion at its finest, any chance Dean saw the NAB Cup series of 2005 or 2007? MC Extra Dollop hit the nail on the head in regards to the quality you can expect to find in such a venture, that is to say it's completely inconsistent.

 

[Call Me Cake]

Haha sif I'm gonna pay.

The biggest monopoly for any website is traffic.

Give people a reason not to bother visiting your site and you've got nothing.

I give it about a week.

 

[Ad76]

Guess you won't be applying for any shares in the Facebook offering then?

Was waiting for this. Google go alright too...

 

[David the Cat]

Was waiting for this. Google go alright too...

This...the argument that advertising doesn't generate enough revenue is spurious....but I guess out of 130 + posts you will find 1 or 2 who will argue the pro side of the paywall argument.

As an ex-pat, Australian news and AFL in particular contribute to my maintaining my " aussieness"...something I cling to with pride. At first sight I was angry that the Hun put up the wall.....but after 30 seconds I started to laugh. They expect people to pay for ThAT standard of journalism on line? Classic Murdoch.

I have removed the HS from my bookmarks as well and won't be visiting their site again, just as I have with The Australian. The alternatives are superior anyway....

To know Jill Singer and Bolt are no longer in my Universe makes me stronger. OOPs...time to tune in to Rush Limbaugh though for my weekly comedy hit.....if only it was funny...

 

[Ad76]

To can provide some insight into the sort of money that they're making too.

When I advertised on the HS site (Supercoach main page) last year they were asking about $3000 for 100k impressions. This was not the main banner ad, but a square mid page.

Even filtered by demographic it still took only about a week to crank out those 100k.

 

[a_fighting_fury]

I won't be paying for online news/footy content from the Sun or anyone else for that matter. It's a bit like buying the paper and then having to pay another fee to read it. We pay to read online via out internet providers. It's a double dip.

If they start charging for Supercoach I won't play it anymore. Simple.

There are numerous places to find out what is going on in the footy world, Big footy being one of them. Actually as someone on here commented they get most of their stories off here anyway. They should be paying Big footy!

Add to this, the advertising which pays to produce the paper also - it's a tripple dip.

 

[a_fighting_fury]

This...the argument that advertising doesn't generate enough revenue is spurious....but I guess out of 130 + posts you will find 1 or 2 who will argue the pro side of the paywall argument.

As an ex-pat, Australian news and AFL in particular contribute to my maintaining my " aussieness"...something I cling to with pride. At first sight I was angry that the Hun put up the wall.....but after 30 seconds I started to laugh. They expect people to pay for ThAT standard of journalism on line? Classic Murdoch.

I have removed the HS from my bookmarks as well and won't be visiting their site again, just as I have with The Australian. The alternatives are superior anyway....

To know Jill Singer and Bolt are no longer in my Universe makes me stronger. OOPs...time to tune in to Rush Limbaugh though for my weekly comedy hit.....if only it was funny...

This is what eats at me the most. Paying for some of the rubbish they submit as news-worthy or 'quality' makes this proposal to pay for it laughable. Let's start with getting them to learn how to spell first. FFS.

 

[RogersResults]

Just in case you haven't already discovered this source of free footy news.

http://footystats.freeservers.com/Daily/Diary.html#analysis


And if anyone want's to see how the Hun will work after the 'free trial' period is over, try http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/ and see if any of the 'tricks' and 'loopholes' can be used to access the paid Times content.

 

[catswhiskers]

Keep them coming Roger! these alternative sites such as the one above and footy almanac I posted offer a specific perspective (Almanac has great historical input / comedy/human interest - John Harms anyone?). They need , however, to adjust somewhat to fill the vacuum that will exist for many who wish to resist pay for footy news online.

I have not read big footy news before - mainly because I rarely stray on to the main board and /or its not clearly visible on my team board. Can it be posed as a sticky on each team board with no ability for mugs like me to post? Just a statement of news with perhaps a comment sourced from within a trusted BF poster pool. You know - some posters know more about drafting than Kevin Sheehan, others good on contract stuff, more good at stats etc.

It will take time but the small guys will have to see this as an opportunity delivered straight to their lap.

 

[coryne]

So not only are the HS locko=ing you out od some of the "additional" content that they provided in the past (eg The Tackle) but they are either cropping previously accessible features (eg Mikes Top 50) so you can only get the commentary on each selection through the digital site or holding articles out of the Newspaper version and featuring them on the HS site instead (the the Nat Fyfe article about his fitness which obviously originated from the same interview Fyfe gave that they made a snippet from regarding the Dockers new game plans)


So the HS newspaper is dropping in quality (if that is possible) and half the content on the website is lock without a subscription. Oh well, it was nice knowing you HS ...........

 

[CF]

they can stick their pay wall where the sun don't shine.

 

[Made4September]

Made a similar thread which got moved (so I wouldn't be surprised if this one did too). Just looked at the "subscription" costs, and it is $2.95/week just for the Digital Pass. Thats $153.40 a year



I just have 2 questions


1) What are the HS smoking if they think people will pay +$150/year to read their stories online

2) Where can I get some

Go save some cash and buy their papers in print form, oh wait, nevermind

 

[LeverPuller]

There really is no comparison - The Tackle is significantly better.

E.g.

...my ****ing laptop.

 

[coryne]

Go save some cash and buy their papers in print form, oh wait, nevermind

And what if I don't have a smart phone/tablet to access the online content on my way to university, which is when I primarily read the news? I get a dumbed down hard copy during the time I would primarily use it.



None of the products they are selling at inflated prices now are of value. The Newspaper version has LOST content (without a reduction in price thus an inflated price) due to it being placed into the digital version now (eg comments for Mike's Top 50/news articles which would otherwise be in the newspaper in previous years) and the Digital version required technology some won't have access to, requires a free now and required bandwith to download it.

 

[Daytripper]

To can provide some insight into the sort of money that they're making too.

When I advertised on the HS site (Supercoach main page) last year they were asking about $3000 for 100k impressions. This was not the main banner ad, but a square mid page.

Even filtered by demographic it still took only about a week to crank out those 100k.

Right, so you got an ad on their most popular page and all it cost you was $3000 over a week.
Doesn't that strike you as incredibly cheap !!!!!

Lets extrapolate that for a moment.
Lets say there are 30 ads on the HUN website - I'm being generous here.
That means the HUN makes 90K a week out of online ads.

And who fronts the cost of the ad (bandwidth, server costs, support etc) ? I assume News Ltd as well. Lets assume 20K

70K a week in advertising is the equivalent of 8500 extra newspapers per day.
Lets say they sell an extra 2000 papers per day with this new strategy. That is extremely, extremely conservative. In fact I will bet anyone their sales will increase by more than that but anyway.

They then only need 10K to take up the paywall offer to break square.
Notwithstanding that the online ads will remain albeit at a diminished cost.

I have to laugh at all these people complaining that they won't read the HUN online anymore. As if they think that News Ltd would seriously care about people who provide them with zero revenue.

Leave. Go away.

By the way, one of the more positive things I'm looking forward to is the amount of whingers who constantly harp on about News Ltd not having anything to complain about anymore. They won't be able to leech off the website for free any longer.

 

[dogbowl]

The Age sports section is still free, see http://www.theage.com.au/afl/

 

[dumb]

Right, so you got an ad on their most popular page and all it cost you was $3000 over a week.
Doesn't that strike you as incredibly cheap !!!!!

Lets extrapolate that for a moment.
Lets say there are 30 ads on the HUN website - I'm being generous here.
That means the HUN makes 90K a week out of online ads.

And who fronts the cost of the ad (bandwidth, server costs, support etc) ? I assume News Ltd as well. Lets assume 20K

70K a week in advertising is the equivalent of 8500 extra newspapers per day.
Lets say they sell an extra 2000 papers per day with this new strategy. That is extremely, extremely conservative. In fact I will bet anyone their sales will increase by more than that but anyway.

They then only need 10K to take up the paywall offer to break square.
Notwithstanding that the online ads will remain albeit at a diminished cost.

couple of things

20k for cost of the ad - you make it sound like the people who are employed to code the HS website do it for free.

assuming people shying away from the paywall in disgust, will turn to buying the paper physically? you have got to be kidding. you've already labelled them as freeloaders then claim they will fork out money elsewhere?

one thing we should perhaps factor in (and which no-one else has as far as i can recall) might be the average intelligence of the online HS reader. they might be stupid enough to take up this offer.