How do we get paid? We’re trying to create a business, not an art form. So far, the model for publishing on the Web has been that advertising will cover the costs and that users will pay nothing. We’ve discovered that’s not going to work, and we’re going to get out.
We get about $10,000 a month in advertising revenues; it costs $50,000 a month to put out the magazine. We’ve lost about $500,000 since we started last July.
Actually, we spend more money marketing ourselves to advertisers than we get back in ad revenues. Advertisers haven’t figured out this new medium. They’re still experimenting, testing the waters. They spend more money building their own Web sites than they do sponsoring other publications.
That goes against the tradition of the Internet, where information has always been free. But maybe that can change. We’re exploring the question by polling our readers. Some say they won’t pay for information, others say they are willing to pay something, even if they think our proposed price of $19.95 a year is too high. What we’re saying is that they should be willing to pay, just as some television viewers contribute to PBS. If readers really care about the product, and value what we’re doing, they need to pay something. Because otherwise we’ll just go away.
Maybe 30 to 40 percent. We’re looking for investors who might want to keep Web Review alive, but so far the response hasn’t been enough.
I feel passionately that the Web needs things like Web Review. If the Internet is to continue to grow, it needs good content, quality programming. But if publishers can’t make money, they’re not going to offer that programming- They’ll go away, just like we are, and so eventually will users. The Internet will become more and more like a utility, a means of communication rather than a destination in itself, where you do interesting things. it will become like a phone line, like the fax and the Yellow Pages.
I think we’ll have a small number of big brand-name publishers like The Wall Street Journal, which have the money to subsidize online editions. Then we’ll have lots of little players-individuals and one-man shops publishing newsletters and their own home pages, a sort of digital amateur hour. What we won’t see much of is medium-size publishers like us, the people trying to put out professional publications catering to different interests, who give the Web its variety and much of its zest. Right now, doing business on the Web feels like being in a crowded room where everyone is throwing elbows. You almost have to get out.
