Below are four charts comparing the webstats from two newspapers of similar size. Dailyerpublic.com is our PAID site, thereporter.com is a FREE site from a neighboring town. These stats are all freely available at quantcast.com. The links are repeated at the bottom of the post for easy comparison of the three SOLANO COUNTY news websites.
The FREE site has many more UNIQUES:
http://www.joeboydston.com/paid_unique.html
When we look at PAGEVIEWS the margin narrows:
http://www.joeboydston.com/paid_pageviews.html
The PAID site takes the lead in visits per user:
http://joeboydston.com/paid_visits_per_user.html
And looking at BILLABLE pageviews per person, the PAID site dominates :
http://joeboydston.com/paid_pageviews_per_person.html
UNIQUE USERS
PAGEVIEWS
VISITS PER USER
PAGEVIEWS PER USER
Newspapers should thank Craigslist. Proof positive that FREE is a business model. An affirmation that classifieds are valuable a product, and worth fighting for. We are reminded that innovation is a necessity, not just a concept taught in business schools or Silicon Valley.
Innovation is a a key habit that all media organizations will need to adopt in order to move their profit centers into the digital era. Craigslist is not a technical marvel, it is a social one. Any local media organization can launch a site exceeding Craigslist’s feature set for under $200 by using software like NOAH’S CLASSIFIEDS. So what is stopping us? They even have a hosted product now for publishers with limited technical resources. How can we afford NOT to innovate?
