You can’t eat page views for dinner.

American newspapers are finding that out the hard way as their disastrous decision based on the “information should be free” mantra to give their content away on their web sites has led to failure. While this has probably been only a minor factor in the demise recently of the Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Tucson Citizen and the comatose financial state of many other papers, it has become a great motivator.

Now, momentum is building the other way … instead of sitting back and wistfully hoping that a high number of pageviews would generate a demand for advertising, which hasn’t happened, publishers are actively looking at a variety of methods to make money online.

“For many years, I have been concerned that so many newspapers tried to charge for access to their brands and content in one medium … print … while giving it away in another medium, online,” says former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz.

“This had the unintended consequence of signaling to readers that the value was less online. Newspaper publishers hoped that online advertising would be enough to support their digital operations and indeed hoped that it would be the growth engine for the entire news franchise, print and online. Alas, online advertising only grew to the trees, not to the sky.

“Now, with online advertising in cyclical decline, news publishers of all kinds … newspapers and magazines but also online-only news organizations … see that it’s hard to support a news department with only the advertising revenue stream.”

Of the various pay possibilities, the most likely to gain widespread use in the future of journalism is …

SUBSCRIPTIONS. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which long has been the only sizable metro paper to charge for its web site, makes readers pay $4.95 a month. Since that’s about 16 cents a day, we’d say it’s far too low. We’d make it a nice round number, easy to remember … $20 a month. That hopefully would bring in a substantial amount of revenue.

But charge what you need to charge to survive … in this sense, a newspaper will become more like a newsletter with a narrow scope but an audience willing to support it. Aren’t many newsletters profitable?

Subscription has the advantage of being familiar … just as you subscribe to receive newspapers and magazines, you would subscribe to gain access to online news.

Crovitz … who is known for turning the Journal around financially and building its pay site to more than one million subscribers, the most successful such effort in the world … expects the subscription method to work the best: “People want full access to their favorite brands without being challenged continuously to make buying decisions.”

In doing so, he had the last laugh over his critics.

“Over the years, there were times when people predicted that readers would never pay to access news online,” he says. “By the time the Wall Street Journal Online crossed the one million paying subscriber mark, the critics quieted down.”

He makes the important point that while it costs a newspaper money to add a print subscriber, it costs little or nothing to add an online subscriber.

“The profitability of online subscription revenue is very, very attractive. Remember that unlike with print subscriptions, which require buying more newsprint, adding press capacity and using trucks and trains to deliver the newspaper, in the case of digital products the incremental cost is almost $0, making the profitability high.”

A very significant event in the move toward a subscription model online occurred with the entry of Steve Brill … the innovative founder of American Lawyer magazine and CourtTV … and his launch of a venture called Journalism Online, set to begin this fall.

Brill wants to build a national site in which newspaper, magazine and online publishers would place their content. Readers would buy “annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes and single articles from multiple publications.”

His partners include Crovitz and cable executive Leo Hindery, so it’s a pretty high-powered effort that may force a breakthrough and create the answer everyone’s been waiting for.

Another way being widely discussed is …

MICROPAYMENTS. Readers would establish a credit account and be charged a token amount, perhaps a few pennies, for each article they click on. That amount would have to be tinkered with to make sure enough revenue comes in. Then there’s …

THE METER. Readers presumably would “park” on the news site and feed the meter to stay on it. The New York Times is considering this one … readers would get some free time to look at a certain number of word counts or pageviews, then click! the meter would start running and they’d start paying. The NYT also is pondering …

THE PBS WAY. Maybe there wouldn’t be those dreadful pledge drives, but readers could buy various membership levels and instead of a Times tote bag, they’d get certain privileges on the paper’s web site. Or maybe they’d get a tote bag, too. And while you’re on this or another paper’s site, why not play …

BINGO. That’s what the British papers do. Nigel Eccles, co-founder and CEO of a British web site where people trade predictions on current and future news events, says “the majority of UK newspapers now offer online bingo.” Readers pay “via debit or credit card” and “most of the games are for small stakes.”

Nonetheless, this represents a significant revenue source for the papers: “At a guess I would say between 25 – 50 percent of UK newspaper online revenues comes from non-advertising sources. Of that a big chunk is online gaming.”

Bingo is just the beginning. Eccles says other popular and lucrative attractions on British paper web sites are “sports betting and also fantasy football (soccer) and cricket. The Sun has a Bingo site which I believe is a big revenue generator for them. They also have white labels with a sports book and online casino. The Telegraph runs a number of very profitable businesses, including a puzzle center and premium fantasy league. Also the Telegraph’s puzzle centre is popular.”

Incidentally, white label means a product or service developed by one company that other companies rebrand to make it appear they made it … as U.S. papers could easily do in reusing these game forms to make some online money.

And what about their effort so far? “It actually surprises me that U.S. newspapers do not offer premium fantasy sports games,” Nigel says. “We are currently developing one for the U.S. market (baseball and NFL) and it has surprised me how few of them have an offering.”

Another technique would be to use …

VIDEO ADS. These would stem from video being blended into reporters’ content on the web.

“The one small piece of good news out of Internet monetization is that web users consider a 10- or 15-second ad that precedes watching a video to be a fair price to pay for free content,” says Paul Conti, instructor in communications at The College of Saint Rose and former news director of NBC affiliate WNYT.

“They ignore most banner ads. They ignore the fly outs on web sites. They click away from ‘cover over’ ads. They will sit and watch the 10- or 15-second ads that precede video.

“If I were newspaper companies, I’d be looking at ways to hire some of the TV reporters and producers who have been laid off. That’s their expertise and many of the victims were very experienced. I realize many newspapers are in no financial condition to do it. Frankly, they should have been moving in this direction three years ago.”

Now we come to the most successful online newspaper revenue method ever devised in this country … it’s what the Wall Street Journal does … put up a wall and make part of the site free and call the other part …

PREMIUM. The Journal charges to look at the premium side … you pay a subscription … and makes it special.

The strategy seems simple enough: Give some popular content away for no charge … political, arts and opinion pieces, blogs, some breaking news stories … to build traffic. And then, behind the pay wall, offer niche content not available elsewhere. In the WSJ’s case, this is its narrow-focus and extensive business and financial coverage.

Does it work? Well, the Journal makes money off it, and the staffers use the money to buy food so they can have dinner. Those page views aren’t very appetizing.

Placing bets is a rather unique activity which requires mastery over the gambling world and knowing your right from the wrong. It is quite tough to get the bet right from the beginning, but perhaps using some of the tips that are listed here, you could have a better chance at winning the bet than going to place it on your own with the kind of risks that you might have. In many cases, knowing something beforehand has proved to be beneficial and in fact the way to go if you want to be safe.

Hence, before you go out there and begin to choose your sports picks, it might be beneficial to know the sport and learn all there is to the game. Having a good foundation of the game is very useful and in fact a way to ensure that you at least know the fundamental aspect of the game before you can wager any of your money. Once you are sure about the game and are comfortable understand the different aspects of the game, it can be a very useful tool to help you win money later on. You can learn from the game by just following it regularly or reading about it from some magazines and journals, to know intricate details of the game that matter to you.

The other thing that you ought to know about sports betting picks is that you might not always win money, and hence, you should be prepared to lose the money as well, if it ever comes to it. Some people take too much risk when they place a large sum on some particular game and then end up shocked when they don’t win it. This scenario is extremely common, especially when the individual is relatively new and has been lucky so far. When you push your luck, you are bound to be pushed back and there will be a point when you are going to lose money and regret having placed such a large amount of money on any one thing.

Some people like to be told where to put their money in. Hence, there are options like free baseball picks which can be a good thing to go in for and essentially something that you could potentially use to place your bets. In many cases, you might notice that the picks are based on the past wins, and hence, there is no guarantee that you will definitely win with these picks. But, the advantage is that if you are not too sure, then this is definitely something that you could go in for to help ease the process of choosing an option for you. You should find it to be a better option than going in blindly and losing all your money in the process.

Here’s what I wrote about Las Vegas in my pre-season preview, ranking the Gladiators 19th out of 19 teams in the AFL coming into the season:

“The Gladiators entered training camp with only two players that were on the roster at the end of last year, the least experienced team in the AFL. Throw in a new head coach (Danton Barto), a new GM and an entirely new staff and inexperience runs rampant for what appears to be the weakest team in the league. Last year was a disaster for Vegas, as they finished with a dreadful -21 turnover ratio. The Gladiators managed to win the turnover battle only once in their 16 games! Can NFL retread Shaun King be a difference maker at quarterback? I wouldn’t bet on it.”

The results through the first six games lived up to those expectations. The Gladiators managed only one victory, rallying from two scores down in the fourth quarter at lowly Grand Rapids. All five of their losses came by double digit margins, failing to cover the opening pointspread in all five defeats. Shaun King was a disaster, ripping his teammates both publicly and privately, as the Gladiators were basically non-competitive.

Last week was a different story entirely, as the Gladiators showed signs of life for the first time in more than a month, taking Georgia to the wire as three touchdown underdogs against the Force. In the week leading up to the game, head coach Danton Barto sent a message to his team that their lackluster play would not be tolerated. After four consecutive ugly losses by an average of more than 24 points per game, the Gladiators decided to clean house. Barto waived ineffective starting quarterback, Shaun King, along with defensive backs Dahnel Singfield and Vontez Duff. Defensive line coach Brian Kelly was let go as well.

The cuts had an immediate impact on the Gladiators level of play. The offense, which had averaged just 37 points per game in their previous four ballgames, scored 68 against the Force. New starting quarterback Brian Jones completed 27-37 passes for 366 yards and eight touchdowns without an interception. Receiver Thabiti Davis grabbed 14 passes for 162 yards and three TD’s, while Etu Molden snared eight receptions for 143 yards and four TD’s. Jones was Barto’s quarterback in AF2 two years ago, leading Memphis to the AF2 championship – this is a coach/quarterback combination with a strong track record of success, and a receiving corps that is certainly capable of making some noise.

Barto, from the Las Vegas Review Journal earlier this week: “We got a good nucleus here to build off of and we’re going to keep fighting each week. I think we showed, probably against one of the top teams in the league, we could go toe to toe with them. I think we’ll be a pain in somebody’s side the rest of the year.” Following their truly dismal start, there should be considerable value on Vegas in the coming weeks as long as last week’s game was not an aberration.

Horse racing, just like any other gambling game, is a game of luck. No matter what you do, you cannot change your luck, but you can surely increase the odds of your winning a race with the help of a good horse betting system.

The Significance of a System

Winning horse racing enthusiasts often claim that the credit of their wins goes to some indigenous horse race betting systems developed by them. On the contrary, we’d like to say that success can be attained only by putting in hard work along with a good knowledge of handicapping for each race you play. However, we do not want to undermine the importance of a good system. In this article, we’ll help you to choose a good one. Let’s make a winner out of you! Read the following tips:

1. To become a good player, you’ll need to learn how to handicap a race before choosing a betting system. Make use of information of available with a number of racing publications and journals. These are available at most newsstands as well as race venues.

Good handicapping will help you get better at using a betting system to the best of your potential. Handicapping will help you in interpreting the race results better and to understand the performance curve of a horse over different periods in its racing career.

2. Select a horse betting system that gives importance to the last performance of a horse. Most experts say that the last race should be given a lot of importance. Horses that performed poorly in their last race may perform extremely well in their next one.

3. Sudden changes in odds need to be taken into account while selecting a betting system. A sudden fall in the odds generally indicates that all other people may be expecting a spectacular performance this time. Similarly, a raise in the odds may indicate a down turn or a less than average performance in the current run.

4. Watch the movement of popular jockeys and see what kind of horses they choose. If there is anyone who knows more about t horses and horse racing, it’s the jockey. And remember, no one wants to lose a race. Going with the jockeys’ choice is often the right thing to do.

5. Lastly, go with a betting system that covers all of your wagers during a particular race and will help the player in wagering on as many entries as possible. This will make sure that you’ll win on one horse and your winnings will make for (or exceed) the losses you incur on others.

Want to learn more about horse betting system? We recommend that you visit some great horse betting sites on the internet. Some will also offer you their betting systems at a price. Now you know what kind of system to go for, don’t you?

We hope you have a great race! Keep winning!

A lot of people think that one would have to be a professional in order to create their own profitable as well as very successful horse racing system. This could not be any farther to the actual truth: you can create your own very successful and equally profitable system. How? Well read below and decide I this is in fact impossible or what:

· The total number runners in one single race will very well affect the chances of wining by a horse you have placed your bets on. Racing on a bigger filed would entail that there would be even more competition. It therefore follows that it would be quite difficult for you to pick out a winner if you are looking at a race that has more than twelve horses or runners in it.

· Keep in mind that the type of ground that the horse is running on would have a great effect on how the race would come out. The ground must be firm to assure you of a great chance of winning. If the ground is soft, well, you better pray that the horse you placed your bets on would have great footing.

· It is important to determine when the horse had raced last. If a horse has not run for a while it would be quite difficult to make judgments on how it would perform this time. It is best to place your bet on a horse that has completed a race not ore than twenty eight days earlier. If there is a horse that has run more recently, all the better to place bets on that one.

· Make sure too that the horse that you picked had finished either first or second during the last race. Yeah, it may have completed a race four days ago, but if it finished last or close to it, you may want to rethink before placing your bets.

· Check the distance of the race to be run, as it is a very important factor as well. Too short races may not give the horse enough time to show what it can really do. A race that would go on too long may tire it entirely – or heck, anything can go wrong in a long race. The ideal race length? Not more than three miles.

· Check the forecasts from the top betting tipsters in the country. Check local papers or betting journals may provide useful tips and information. Watch out for special selections that they advice or tip as these are most likely credible advice because after al, they know the odds and are very much familiar with how the system works.

· Always remember that the favorites win thirty three percent of the time. So even if they are on the lower ranking, make sure you bet for them and you may not regret it afterwards.

· Choose non handicap races as these are less difficult to create predictions on as compared to handicap races. Do all of this and you are on your way to creating your own successful horse racing system.