Money in the Online Media

A largely unsuccessful way to make money for a newspaper is putting the paper up on a website. Unfortunately, this is the only way for a newspaper to keep up with the rapidly changing times. People want instant graification in every thing these days, including news. It's much simpler to go onto a news website like CNN.com than to go out to a store and pick up the local daily paper. The problem with a newspaper moving to a website is that websites cost money to own and maintain, while providing little opportunity to make money. Websites have to turn to selling web advertisements to companies in order to support the much needed website. These ads are similar to those in the newspaper, except tha they generally contain less informations in themselves and more often link to a company's website. Unlike Newspaper ads, these online ads can work on a "per-click" payment system, in which the company re-imburses the newspaper based on the number of times someone clicked on the ad to learn more, whereas with a normal newspaper ad, the newspaper could simply sell the ad for a set amount based on position and size, and it was assumed that readers would always see the article and make the judgement to pursue the company or not at home.

Another thing newspaper sites can do is to create an archive (which costs a little more, as this requires online storage space) of back stories and issues of the paper which are only accessable with a form of paid membership or the like. This is still a low income-provider that does little to make the newspaper money. Newspapers have a lot of trouble trying to make money off of the internet to off-set the amount lost by consumers switching to digital media for their needs.

The Caledonian record's website doesn't seem to have a very effective way of making money. It has a decent number of non-invasive ads, but doesn't charge for the archive. I believe they should make the archive showy and impressive and charge membership fees. They need to find a way to reach a broader audience, expand interest, and compete with other online as well as solid newspaper competitors.