Well, I've heard from my old pal Roger Ogelsby, publisher of the Seatle PI, who says the traffic numbers I had for the site were all wrong. (There may be some subsites that have classified and other advertising that weren't counted by compete.com) He's directed me to the Hearst press release, which claims:
"In January, Nielsen ranked seattlepi.com among the top 30 newspaper Web sites with 1.8 million unique users. The site has an average of 4 million unique monthly visitors, according to internal Hearst tracking."
A hundred times better than the numbers I saw. If they can monetize those four million unique visitors at 25 cents per visitor per month, that would be a $1 million a month in revenues. And they'd have a real chance at profitability.
Roger seems quite confident that the online only operation can be a financial success.
We're all rooting for ya, Roger.
I guess it’s an inexorable process. Maybe the question is not “if it can be profitable” but “how making it profitable”. Probably the greatest problem of printed newspapers is distribution and web based platforms are a much stronger channel for spreading information and reaching readers, besides the possibility of cutting costs and building a more efficient business model.
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