Opinions about online newspaper access fees

The solution is to give them something they can't get for free (easier said than done).

 

This is basically what I'm doing at mgoblog.com. Once you get up into the range of millions of page views a month even low CPM advertising is enough to live on; my site also makes money from t-shirt sales, donations, text link ads, and I freelance some. I'm bringing in enough that I've got a couple guys working on the site part time with the hope they can go full time in 2 or 3 years. We're just trying to start in on selling ads ourselves now. It's a lot of work to get to millions of page views and essentially requires you to be willing to take a chance at making something yourself in your early to mid 20s, but the rewards are nice.

Problems from the perspective of people here: my site is explicitly partisan, pretty technical, and writes from a "we" perspective. I'm also a computer engineer who can do a lot of tech stuff on my own and my brother's an IT guy who hosts the site. I've got a lot of advantages. Don't know if a just-the-facts-ma'am type site could make it in the same way I have. Maybe, maybe not, but it's not my model. I tend to write long detailed things that can't be summarized in a factoid. It's close to the opposite of newspaper writing restricted by newshole.

 

Just wanted to say Brian has a very good niche site. Might be the best team-oriented college site in the country. Interesting to hear you are making a living off of it (and not that I'll ask how much you make, but I guess everyone's opinion of what the amount would be to make a living off a website would be different, depending on your mortgage, kids, etc. situation). Just saw that The State is charging for South Carolina football stories now ... so I guess this shouldn't be surprise. Sports can sell - depending on the fan base.

 

A question for all of you.

If you posted this online news access fees survey link (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/newspapers) on your news site and it was made clear that it was for a college student's study, do you think your readers would assume that your news site was considering the addition of access fees?

Two metro dailies have now said "no" to posting a brief mention about the survey because they are afraid of this happening.