ivanwalsh’s posterous

paidContent reports that newspapers owned by The New York Times News Service will start to put New York Times content online first --- as well as online only.

Members will also be able to access NYTimes.com content that doesn’t show up in the print edition of the paper.

paidContent quotes a spokesperson who clarified that the “new digital product is designed to offer clients more value as their businesses evolve.”

Cristian Edwards, president of The New York Times News Service, added, “As the news cycle speeds up, we are working to provide our clients with faster news and increased publishing rights.”

Want to read more?
 
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ivanwalsh

Filed under  //   content   digital content   digital delivery   digital downloads  

Matt Peckham reports on PCWorld that GameStop is playing with numbers as it tries to play down the relevance of downloadable games.
It cites the IndustryGamers reports which says that ‘GameStop doesn't expect digital distribution to be a threat to stucco-and-rebar-retail until 2014.’

GameStop "has been monitoring and studying the capabilities of digital downloading and its potential adoption over the last several years" and that the company recently "conducted the most thorough study to-date on its capability."
Matt takes a pretty hard look at the figures.
GameStop believe that an "addressable market" for digital downloads won't exist for another five years; only 25% of the population will have access to the technology necessary to download full games.
As I write, I have Second Life on my 4 year-old laptop and have streaming music coming down the wires.
Why the 5 years?
Costs are another issue.
It reckons ‘service costs ($100/month), storage limitations, and consumer price intolerance will offset digital's chances of supplanting retail anytime soon.’
According to the study, consumers will pay up to $39 per downloadable game, an expectation GameStop thinks will act as a ‘disincentive for publishers facing escalating production costs’.
This is rubbish.
I have high speed broadband for less than 10 USD per month, almost unlimited storage with Gmail and my web hosting ($5 per month) give me GBs of space/traffic.
Math points out that ‘download portals don't charge a usage or monthly/annual membership fee, and as the broadband market grows, competitive pressure should keep even the fastest consumer services from moving up much past $50 a month, while legal obstacles should prevent companies from enforcing usage caps or engaging in traffic shaping or bandwidth throttling.’
Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, who wrote the report, notes that GameStop's “Management.... feels that digital growth and brick and mortar growth can co-exist,” said Bhatia. “Through their brick and mortar locations, the company can help facilitate and capitalize off digital. Overall, management did not seem at all concerned about the near-term threat but instead is looking at ways to potentially profit from digital.”
Read that line again - management did not seem at all concerned about the near-term threat.
James Brightman, over on IndustryGamers, thinks that GameStop will be hurt by the digital revolution in the games industry, as video games move away from the boxed product model and towards the games as a service model.
He warns that ‘If GameStop doesn't want to see its stock tank, the company will have to start thinking about how to transform its business for the near future.’
Here's the bottom line.
Matt again – ‘In a thriving digital distribution market, GameStop loses. They're late to the game, and not doing much to distinguish themselves from their more evolved and intrepid competition.’
Their revenue model depends on dominating the high street. On the web, they’ve missed the boat and are flapping around trying to avoid the inevitable.
Update: a post on IndustryGamers make the point that ‘a download-only game (XBLA Magic the Gathering) was in the top 5 most played X360 games this week… points to the fact that the Age of Download is coming faster than many may expect or desire.

Filed under  //   Digital   Digital Downloads   EA   epayments   GameStop   gaming   MP3   online payments   paypal  

I've used Clickbank to sell digital products for 10 years. In that time I have seen other competitors, such as eJunkie.com and PayLaodz.com arrive and give Clickbank a run for its (digital) money. What disappoints me about Clickbank is that its failure to address its weakness and improve product designs that would make it a truly remarkable product.

With a little tweaking, Clickbank could be in the industry standard for selling digital products.

So, if anyone from Clickbank is listening here are five areas you could improve.

1. Digital Delivery

When you buy a product on Clickbank, it sends you to a download page on the customer’s site where you save the file. This has a few problems.

1. This web-page can be bookmarked and sent to others, who can then download the product.

2. This webpage must be created by the seller for every product. Time is money and this takes a lot of time.

3. This download page must be available 24*7. So, if your hosting company goes down, your customers cannot download their product.

As far as I know, Clickbank is the only leading e-tailer that uses this (old-fashioned) system.

What’s the alternative?

When you buy with Payloadz.com, the customer is sent an email with a link to the download. This removes the need/time to create unique web-pages for each product ala Clickbank.

Ghacks.net also takes up this point, “take a look at their requirements for pages, or better thank you pages that sell Clickbank products.”

It points out that the “requirement is that a thank you page has to be created on the website that is selling the product which will be displayed after the purchase has been made. Many Clickbank webmasters put download information of their products on this page to make it as easy as possible for their customers to download the product once the purchase has been made.”

Ghacks.net adds some tips on securing the pages. Most Clickbank Thank You pages contain the following or a similar sentence:

‘Please Note: Your credit card will be billed by “CLKBANK*COM”. The name “CLKBANK*COM”will appear on your credit card statement.’

Searching for ‘clkbank right click’ reveals hundreds of product pages that offer the product as a download after making the purchase.

Read more here http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/22/clickbank-we-have-a-problem/

Going back to Payloadz.com, it also means that the delivery is quicker.

The customer is not sent from

1) your site to

2) Clickbank and then

3) back to your site.

Also, the customer gets 5 attempts to download the product with Payloadz e.g. http://store.payloadz.com/detail_html.asp?Id=196478 and then the link expires.

Does Payloadz.com work?

I have used Payloadz.com since April. Not one complaint. Read that again. Not one complaint.

Why use Clickbank?

I still use Clickbank as I have designed the whole site around it and to change the code would take weeks.

Sadly, every morning I get emails from customers saying they didn’t get the product, the link doesn’t work, where is the link…

Over the course of a week, this takes several hours of customer support to address, which is proving to be very time-consuming and expensive.

Next week, I’ll discuss another area where Clickbank can improve - hoplinks!

Let me know what you think.

PS: my shop on Payloadz.com is here: http://store.payloadz.com/results/results.asp?m=33579

Ivan

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ivanwalsh

Filed under  //   Clickbank   digital downloads   digital goods   eJunkie   epayments   Payloadz   Paypal   security