Review and Critique of Article #02

Article #02:
Online Players Come of Age
Day, M, 2005, ‘Online Players Come of Age’, The Australian, 21.10.04, p. 20.

There has been talks on the world wide web becoming the communications platform in the 21st century. However, the question is on how to make money out of it.

This article by Mark Day, cited several examples on how business could be derived via websites.

As a result of internet advertising, Stephen Mayne doubled his output while Tim Blair received global response in terms of financial contribution. Richard Ackland shared similar experiences as he had buyers demanding his online law journal, Justinian, after advertising it through his website.

However, not all web-owners shared similar experiences as some made losses. As mentioned in the article (Day 2005), some of these webowners were experiencing losses from web-users not willing to pay for the internet usage while others were being sued for defamation.

In order to get more eyeballs to their websites so as to make profits, the clients themselves have to be IT-savvy. Inevitably, such limitations would exclude those who prefer to derive information from books rather than from screen.

In addition to this, online publishers would also need to understand the market well before embarking on this new business platform. For instance, Richard Walsh changed his tactics by trimming down his lengthy 5000-word commentary daily to about 700 to 800 words. His efforts paid off as the number of subcribers started to peak again after dipping a period of time.

Branding also play a major role in the success of online bulletin. Blair, who originally started out as a freelancer, became an established writer after receiving about 20 000 to 30 000 hits on his articles daily.

Although online information is instant and easy to retrieve, its supply is dependent on its demands. Perhaps online information could supplement the other current source of information such as journals and encyclopedia.