Punchng.com reverses stand, open content to the public

We reported several times here about punchng.com decision to monetize their news content via subscription. The step was taken about 7 months ago which had adverse effect on the site’s visitors and subsequently on its ranking.

Punch News Paper Management saw a massive increase in their online asset and thought the best way to make use of it is to have people pay for the news via recharge cards. Well, from the traditional news media stand, it was a good decision but from the “Attention Economy” of the web it was a disaster waiting to happen. Apart from the scarcity of the cards, people were not ready to go through the headache of looking out for scratch card everywhere. They want news here and now and above all FREE!

After they redesigned their site and making it social, by including blogs and other social media platforms. It was expected to see an increase in site visitors but nothing moved.

Punchng.com moved from number 1 site in Nigeria in April and May to 7^th in June and later disappeared from the top ten in July. Our last month’s ranking saw it sitting on the 15^th spot but we expect a move in this month ranking due to this change. This has led to increase in usage of other Nigerian news outfit in the country. The newly launched 234next.com made our top ten recently and has shown itself as a viable competitor for establish news outfits. Vanguard newspaper is the biggest beneficiary as it has seen itself battling in the top 3 position for the past three months.

As traditional media around the world wake up to the reality of the web and its impact on their empires, the fight has begun to salvage the print media from the impeding demise. Rupert Murdoch and other owners of traditional media battle to reverse the trend. They are surely losing the battle and the best they can do for now is to work out a viable web business model, because most times, the strategies offline to work online. Google has been smiling to the bank for the past five year, taking advantage of the web economy.

The earlier online players understand the economy of the web the better, you don’t monetize your content, you monetize attention! On the internet, information is not scarce attention is. If you refuse to give people the information you have, they can freely get it elsewhere.

What do you think punch was thinking and now realized?

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