I found an interesting article in the offline WSJ (I subscribe) and I was going to put a lengthy discourse about this article on the blog today. Assuming that you don't have a membership to WSJOnline then you've got almost no clue as to what I was going to send you to unless I give it a descriptive tag.



Talk about brand opportunities missed.

For a newspaper that professes expertise in technology this one isn't living up to its brand promise.

Here are a few suggestions to fix it.

• 1) Allow your offline readers to find their articles easily online. Put a text perma-link in the footer of each offline article so that if your readers want reprints or just want to send a note about the article to someone they can do so easily.
• 2) Embrace bloggers as your friends. We drive traffic. We can even drive revenue, but we tend not to point to links that block us from content. If you want to increase revenue from individual articles online then perhaps you could make your direct links a little more friendly. Give us the first paragraph and/or a summary of the article. Let us show our own readers what we're linking them to. Heck - at this point we don't even know if the traffic we sends you actually links to the right article unless we purchase your service - why would you only accept link traffic from existing clients? Doesn't that rather limit your growth?
• 2A) Acknowledge that once you publish something in print it will be picked up everywhere else. Bloggers will mention it, other newspapers will reference it... and you'll be missing out on any profits or web traffic since you've barred the gate.
• 3) If any business is going to succeed with micropayments I'd suggest its yours. If you're going to bar the gate anyway, why not allow people to read only the article they're interested in. Charge by the word, for one day access, by author... anything. If people are coming in with a direct link you know they want to see something specific - why try to sell them your whole paper? I'd personally like to refer readers to you, but know that unless I stop linking in two weeks I'm going to have my own readers take issue with my continued pointing to a site that they can't see.

Oh, and to my dear readers... the article I wanted to talk about was titled "Congress Toughens TV-Indecency Fines." I was going to pontificate on whether or not there will be a race to get the first fine, since there will be a large amount of press the first time it is instituted. It is cheaper to be fined the $325K than it is to buy commercials on top shows, and that $325K will get more mentions on the news than anything you could do traditionally. Sure, the fine will hurt, but based on the investments already made in typical advertising programs this is less than an average budget over-run.

Last thought for WSJ... Why not focus on dual memberships or create a hybrid membership for offline readers that may want to send articles to friends? Give us access to one story a day online (with the handy helpful links you'll put at the end of each story.) Yes, I know you're implying that your service is too valuable to give away anything - that's why you're actually profitable online - but you can be more profitable if you open the door a little bit and let some people sample your goods in the online environment. I know you have a few designated free articles, but why not allow people to select what they want as free? (It's great that someone wants to give me all the free pears that I can eat, but what if I hate pears - and I know you sell apples too? Am I just out of luck?)

No more links to WSJ until they make it easier for us to allow our readers to actually see the story we're linking to.

Tate Linden Principal Consultant Stokefire Consulting Group 703-788-9925