Seeking Alpha’s David Jackson has given David Kaplan some hard numbers on how its pay-per-pageview program is getting along after six months in operation. In total, 550 paid contributors have written 8,985 premium articles, and have been paid $517,585 in total.
That works out to $157 per author per month, or $58 per published article; it also means that the typical paid contributor comes up with 2.7 premium articles per month, on average.
All these numbers are likely to rise modestly over time, but they’re very much in line with the pessimistic projections I made when the program launched. For the kind of investment professionals that Seeking Alpha seeks as contributors, $157 per month or $58 per article simply does not constitute what Jackson calls “significant income.” Nor does an average of 2.7 articles per month come anywhere near the stated aim of Seeking Alpha that premium contributors will “park their financial identity” on the site.
And if my own stats are any indication, there’s a huge amount of sheer luck in terms of which articles end up getting pageviews. Over the past 12 months — that’s the 12 months from July 2010 to date—my most popular article is this one, from March 2008. That’s entirely a function of SEO, I’m sure: my old headline happened to coincide with something that people were searching on over the past year.
Jackson didn’t tell Kaplan how much the top contributors ended up making from the program, but it’s fair to assume that the median numbers are significantly lower than the mean. And even at the top of the league table, I suspect that Seeking Alpha’s best-paid contributor is still making less money than its worst-paid employee.
From Seeking Alpha’s perspective, the premium-post program has delivered 8.6 million pageviews per month on average. That compares to total monthly pageviews of 51 million per month, down from 63 million in April. An important part of the whole, to be sure, but still pretty marginal, considering that without the program, most of those posts and pageviews would have appeared in any case. And in terms of marginal extra unique visitors, the numbers are surely minuscule: very few people will have visited SA as a result of the premium program who would not have visited otherwise.
Jackson told Kaplan that “word is getting out that a growing number of people are making serious money from the program.” I follow this stuff pretty closely, and that word hasn’t reached me; what’s more, there’s nothing in the numbers Jackson provided which gives any evidence of this—or even that anyone at all is making serious money from this program. Here’s a question for Jackson: give me a number you consider to be “serious money,” and then tell me how many people are making that much money. If that’s your metric for success, go ahead and make it public!
One cent per pageview that they're paying out is almost nothing, that's the fundamental problem. On the other hand, $10 CPM is pretty high for most online ads, so I wonder if they're really making that, even with financial ads. The fundamental problem is that ads will never pay as much as subscriptions can, so they're stuck begging people for essentially free content. If they were smart, they'd go subscription for premium content and only use ads for some free sampler stuff, but nobody ever accused any of these content businesses of being smart. ;)
#1 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Thu 7 Jul 2011 at 02:53 PM
Looking at it directly in terms of pageviews and average articles per month is not a correct way of viewing the program.
I know quite a few authors who are very happy as their status has been raised since the beginning of the program. Those who consult or write newsletters are seeing a bump in business.
You have to find your way within the ecosystem Seeking Alpha has created and use it to your advantage.
It is interesting that StockTwits partnered with CNN/Money for a similar program just a few months after Seeking Alpha's program started. That shows it is having a positive effect in the financial blogosphere.
#2 Posted by David Urban, CJR on Fri 8 Jul 2011 at 10:36 AM
The way to monetize internet content is with micropayments.
The full description of this idea is at the blog:
http://ssgreenberg.name/PoliticsBlog/2010/04/25/monetizing-internet-content/
#3 Posted by Steve13565, CJR on Sat 9 Jul 2011 at 12:37 PM
Steve, I've made the same point before, in some detail (read the comments). However, subscription systems can be a first step, as there currently is no micropayments tech they can use. In fact, Seeking Alpha could set up their own internal micropayments system, where they collect a reader fee up front then transfer a micropayment from each reader's account to the writer's account every time an article is downloaded. However, as I said, they're likely not smart enough to do that, as nobody has done that yet.
#4 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sat 9 Jul 2011 at 04:53 PM
I still say the elephant in the room is fact that there are millions of people willing to give away content for nothing.
All the payment systems in the world don't make a dime's bit of difference if there are free sites doling out the news. Anyone given the choice between free or paid content will choose the free content every time, giving up quality in the process in they must.
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sat 9 Jul 2011 at 11:58 PM
padik, and how many sites do you read that do not charge anyone for their news? The only reason you get free news is because sites like the NYT charge their print subscribers and give it away for free online. When all those sites go bankrupt, as they have been doing for a decade now, you won't have any free sites left. The sites who truly give the news away for nothing are largely amateurs who I bet you don't read.
As for giving up quality, don't make me laugh, the WSJ and Economist are laughing all the way to the bank with their subscription model. The fundamental problem for most sites like the NYT or the Tribune Co is that their management is brain-dead, they don't know the first thing about business. If you think online content will remain free after all the old media dinosaurs are dead, you don't know the market too well.
#6 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sun 10 Jul 2011 at 05:24 AM
"In 2005, the [Wall Street]Journal reported a readership profile of about 60 percent top management, an average income of $191,000, an average household net worth of $2.1 million, and an average age of 55."
"The Economist has enviable demographics. In the United States, nearly two out of every three readers earn more than $100,000 a year. The magazine is unabashedly elitist, especially in its marketing."
"Median individually earned income for a reader of the Sunday [New York]Times is $56,421."
See the difference?
I don't question the ability of trade publications to succeed with their paywalls. I pay a huge amount of money for online access to legal trade publications. People will pay for quality content when they can use the information to make money. General news is a different story, however.
#7 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 10 Jul 2011 at 08:33 AM
pad, I'm well aware of the argument that the WSJ/Economist subscription models are not replicable, I just find the argument dumb. Most NYT revenues still come from print subscriptions and sales, $434/year per print reader, $385/year in print advertising and $3.85/year in online advertising. Yes, online advertising from 45 million unique visitors/month generates 1% of the advertising revenue of less than 2 million print subscribers, and that's the ridiculous model all the moron content businesses are chasing. Granted, many advertisers still cling to old media, so that's part of the problem for online ads, but online ads are also easier to avoid and I don't see them ever doing well online. The notion that NYT readers won't pay is laughable when so many are already paying so much for print subscriptions.
Now don't get me wrong, I think the NYT and every other old media outfit is too dumb to realize this and other important factors, like the critical importance of software development to new media, so they will all go bankrupt, but the notion that paid models won't be dominant is ridiculous.
The WSJ and Economist are not "trade publications," they're newsier than any other publication you can think of.
#8 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Sun 10 Jul 2011 at 09:17 PM
Guys, these sites aren't giving away content for free, they're selling their content's audience to advertisers. This is why they're stuck, if they build the pay wall, the audience numbers (and therefore the ad rates) drop as subscription revenues increase. The problem with the model is that the online ad rates are too low to pay for the cost of content. (A problem made worse with aggregators like the Huffingaol driving the price of content down - by use of free user submitted content - and sucking ad rates out of original work by reprinting their content)
"Trade Publications" don't depend on ad rates as much since they are selling their content and Murdoch has the diversity and deep pockets to set rules for his businesses even if they cost him ad revenue in the short term.
The future of print press is the Ap issue, in which readers can download the stories in print and select interactive synopses such as charts and journalist video to make the story more rich. Embedded in that richness is the ad that pays for the story. The print part of journalism will become more teaser than full story.
The online departments of tv providers (such as msnbc and fox) get this, the nytimes needs to catch up.
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 10 Jul 2011 at 11:29 PM