Is the Mainstream Free Business Model Failing?
 

http://www.permuto.com/blog/2009/10/...nchmark-sites/

Short of it, the top 100 advertisers buying ads on these 4 free websites earn them millions monthly. Kind of crazy to think this is only the advertising money.

CNET $3m Month
IMDB $7.2m Month
NY Times $7.1m Month

Facebook $49 Million Monthly


I'm drafting a letter to these corps now to tell them that giving away everything for free simply doesn't pay and they should change business models while they can.

news sites are like tubes

A tv network, newspaper news, movie db and social network. Should they have selected another industry that people say makes no money and then taken a look?

I would think news sites have it far worse than any porn site / tube. I can get the news zero second from twitter, my tv, the radio, papers, friends, my phone... all without having to pay extra for the news.


CNN and NYT pulling in that type of money, while they are easily the largest pirated, ripped, duplicated industry in the world - should tell our industry something.

New York Times just laid off 100 people. Does that $7 million make up for lost revenues elsewhere?

I'm sure... being a newspaper.

Lots of companies replace incomes streams and fire off big parts of staff that aren't needed anymore.

Less , printing people needed, editors, research time, journalists in general, helpers of all types, delivery people, mail volume drops, marketing/sales teams can be reduced, outsourced labor more, so much really.

They probably don't make near the gross they once did, but I bet they cut the fat now like never before too.