Cornwall Ontario – CFN like all media outlets needs revenue to survive. Our original business model was to support local business at reasonable rates.
In fact we didn’t have digital ads (like adsense) until the City initiated a conspiratorial boycott that impacted our roster of advertisers, many of whom were threatened and bribed to pull their ads even though some had even given testimonials showing how well CFN served them.
We may have brought Leon Sabourin a lot of action for Schnitzels, but when city contracts could be threatened for Laurier Electric could anyone blame the astute business people of Cornwall for caving in to the pressure?
This is the type of behavior that has hurt the local economy far more than this newspaper. Nobody should be pressured who they shop with or who they advertise with. Sadly too many give into the petty thugs and bullies which pulls us all down in this community.
With over 90 million ad impressions available via our 15 million human pageviews in 2017 alone could you not imagine the positive impact for a city this size? Especially with our demographics and reach?
So we adjusted and kept building our audience, but as we expanded into other markets businesses would ask why should they advertise in a newspaper from Cornwall regardless of how much traffic we built up in their community. A valid question,and while answerable, still a hurdle.
The Toronto Star right now gives you 5 free articles monthly and then charges about $20 per month which is a huge value and less than $1.00 per day for a top notch newspaper.
What we decided to do at CFN is have most of our content still be free with no hitches, but that if you wish to read our premium content you have to be a subscriber.
For 2019 that would be a grand total of $9.99!
That’s it. If people won’t pay that then the future of newspaper is very dim.
We still ask for viewer donations too, but as we decided if it came to it we’d rather have 100,000 paid monthly human pageviews than 1M freebies.
This mix of paid premium content and free basic content just might be the best mix for this area and we’ll see how 2019 finishes to decide the next step.
CFN wants to attract more writers and contributors and everyone deserves to get paid for their work including yours truly.
So now it’s your turn. Please click that subscription button as numbers do count and you need to be counted.
If you have any questions feel free to email us at info@cornwallfreenews.com or via our hotline at 855 444 1133.
What is defined as “premium” and what will be “free?” Will the name be changing as it’s no longer “Free News?”
Hugger Free is simply the fact that we are Independent. Nothing has changed. Premium Content varies. Generally much of the opinion pieces will be PC. Weather, police blotters, etc are basic content. The T Star for example, and many media, give you a few free stories and then you have to pay for all. This offers some balance, and honestly, this newspaper is worth a lot more than $10 per year to read.
Thanks for the info. I’ll have to decide if the “premium content” is worth it to me. I’ve donated in the past. But c’est la vie.
We all make decisions Hugger. CFN needs revenue to survive. We have three streams essentially, advertising, subscriptions, and viewer donations. We’ve come to the decision that we love to grow and as much as we love our current level of over a million human pageviews monthly, we’d rather have 100K paid than 100M free. As we celebrate our 10th Anniversary in February it’s important that we ensure the newspapers survival and that takes cash.