New Chair. Not quite there yet

Interesting analysis on the viability of newspapers online from local political commentator Owen Polley over at 3k Versts.

Correctly Polley points out this is in a way make or break for print media,

It’s a commonplace that newspapers, almost universally, are now struggling to return a profit, simply because people have become so used to receiving content for free, over the internet.

This is indeed true, as even the most cursory of glances at circulation trends over recent years will attest to.

He contends –

Any blogger will acknowledge that, while blogs can analyse, it is still main stream journalists who gather the raw material for most content which finds its way unto the internet.

And it’s here where I would find fault. The idea is that news, in the pure meaning of the word, is something that depends on mainstream media to be communicated effectively.

Indeed by rushing to make people pay for content that while timely is editorially lighter than the not-so-mainstream yet heavier than free sources such as the BBC, papers risk exposing their business model as extinct before they can truly understand how to provide an online service consumers will pay for.

For example, let’s look at who has gone before.

FT.com has implemented a profitable paywall for a few years now. People subscribe to a service that provides analysis and informed commentary not seen elsewhere. In business 101 parlance they have a USP for their online content and it works. By contrast consumers do not care what source they get for a general news story online. Indeed aggregators make the destination less important, and with the same syndicated news often being published verbatim across news sites, the trend is for the distinction to lessen even further.

Whereas in the IrishNews.com’s experience, a site that previously received millions of hits in traffic prior to their paywall going up, I recently spoke to a marketing consultant who was doing some work for them at the time they introduced a paywall. A standard, if polished, regional news title – and one which has the added ‘benefit’ of attracting the loyalty of a particular political tribe in NI – their attempts to monetise this loyalty online has met minimal success.

In the presence of the choice luxury that the web offers, consumers are unwilling to pay for what is an inherently commoditised product. Nor do Rupert Murdoch-inspired ideas that “things can’t stay free forever” wash particular well, with the permanence of the BBC and other state broadcasters offerings.

With Murdoch forcing the issue though, it remains to be seen whether newspapers will differentiate themselves in time for consumers to give paywalls a chance. If they don’t they will have sped up – not slowed down – their rate of attrition.

First off Wordpress.com doesn’t allow you to futer enough, especially with any PHP so that’s out. Then began googling free wordpress host (as you tend to do) and first result chosen was dreamhostapps. No good they only give you a restricted version of the wp-admin interface that prevents you from editing any script.

So I guessed what I really wanted was free cpanel hosting. That usually comes with the excellent fantastico script autoinstaller. 000webhost.com were first up with what I thought was a cpanel host. Actually just another case of false advertising on the web – they give you a restricted own brand control panel that although contains the button for Fantastico, once clicked you are told they are ‘upgrading’ it with no fixed date for go live.

this is gonna take some work, so throwaway email address to hand, I began bumping off every part of the web…

• Well i6networks.com got an immediate fail with attempting to force me into buying a domain to get at my free hosting.
• bluechiphosting.com another short and sweet as they are currently ‘out of stock on this item’.
• toadshosting.com “Sorry free hosting requests are currently unavailable due to general maintenance.”
• hugewire.com got me going with their more thorough entry form – you know, like the more difficult a task is then the more worthwhile it must be? I’m still waiting on their registration confirmation email.
• freecpanel.co.uk 100meg of bandwidth would get used up pretty sharpish
• hosthelpers.com fell asleep reading about the hoops to jump through

2nd page of google.co.uk…

• 0php.com gives quite a comprehensive list of free script hosting. Gave it a shot…
• 110mb.com – either I keep failing the human validation or it’s another dud.
• free-space.net (you might have heard of f-snet.com) tried to get me to sign up to pay per action marketing…
• heliohost.org’s ‘daily signup limit has been exceeded’
• ismywebsite.com relaunching in 20 days…
• x10hosting.com ooh close one, I’ve used them before and these guys do a good job right up until they delete your account for not logging into their forums every 30 days.
• so the 0php list exhausted, back to Googling…
• stonerocket.net wants me to make 10 non-spam posts on their forums (and didn’t tell me until after I registered). Does “frist post!11111111111″ count?
• By this stage the penny dropped – these were resellers offering up a few free accounts (or none at all) on their bargain bucket fly by night cheapo ‘unlimited bandwidth’ accounts with another hosting firm. Undaunted, our hero struggles on regardless…
• funkyvision.co.uk ditto with the stonerocket experience
• freecpanels.com free cpanels! with a paid for account!
• thefreehoster.com I’ve got a billing account setup (why do I need one of those for a free cpanel btw hmm?) just no cpanel account – which ‘will follow separately’…

The last straw came when megabyet.com duly redirected me upon sign up to securesignup.net which when I attempted a login on my new cpanel from their insiduous ‘interface’, redirected me to a site that Opera flagged up as likely to ‘try to induce me to give them my credit card details’. Nice.

And that’s the point I gave up the hunt for a no ads, no hidden fees, no catches wordpress/cpanel host. So I compromised and went for one of those forum activity-metered ones – x10hosting.com gave me close enough. Besides it’s nothing a little automated log-in script couldn’t sort out…

They’ve set up a ‘guide’ that contains regurgitated articles from across the web with the added SEO magic dust of adding ‘Belfast’ to the end of each article title. Other regions are doing the same thing with the exact same articles. Compare Kent Online with Belfast er, online. Or Londonderry for that matter.

This particular form of content spamming, or spamdexing is known as article spinning and although Google permit it, they normally require linking back to the original source. But…

Looking further into this they don’t give SEO juice to the original source (courtesy of a nofollow link) and also employ a 3rd party service to put random local companies addresses in a directory listing at the top of the page. If you want your company address added ‘free of charge’ there’s a link that takes you to their site.

Directorym.co.uk the business behind this has built up a large network of publishing partners but I wonder are local sites such as the Tele aware they are just republishing generic non-local content with a single keyword added in to the title? I doubt that is really delivering a service that ‘fits the exact needs of our end users by combining important, local information into one place’. Directorym’s goal is ‘to become the central database in…countries well before anybody even thinks of database centralization.’

Personally I don’t see the value in a central db of spammed articles delivered via online media agencies, ‘local’ or not.

Ran into this while searching for local anti-virus services. Both Belfast & Londonderry searches contain Directorym-sourced spam links from a few different publishers.

For the Win 

Toppris – a kind of biscuit/topic/milky chocolate hybrid

Fail

Real Energy Chocolate – disgusting dark stuff

Guess which one we got issued…

So how about for 2009 we give up on the monthly sales numbers and builder-confidence surveys and home-price indexes. We already know 2009 isn’t going to be any better than 2008 in the housing market. Let’s just wait until next January to confirm that and avoid all the angst in between.Steve Kerch, assistant managing editor, MarketWatch

Similar rant against financial idiotism in Kevin Depew’s 5 things column on Minyanville today.