It appears as if the guys at punch have gotten back to their senses. I was surprised to find that they have repented of their childish ways. Who on earth in their right senses will pay to access a Newspaper's Website when the others offer theirs for free?

If true, it's about time. The last time I visited, after 3 or so months, which was around the time Nkem Owoh was kidnapped, you still had only the 1 paragraph of teaser text with the invitation to "subscribe to read more". I therefore put them again on indefinite suspension.

I will give them another shout out today. If based on the articles I want to read, they still tease, another indefinite suspension!

well, profit orientated business is always out there to maximize a profit. mind you they just tested a business model.

A model which, if they had paid competent people, would not have been implemented in the first place. A simple google of even Nigerian online papers, their closest competition, would have made them realize that the model was doomed to fail from the get-go.

There is no excuse for what they did. If they really wanted to maximize profit and were not getting returns from regular ads, they should do what again, their competition is doing: pepper their site with google ads. After a year of not getting any ads on my news site, I did just that and now, my google ad revenue is up from $5 a month 2 years ago, to $12 a month a year ago, to currently $20 a month.

Again, a simple feasibility study by competent people (granted it would have cost more money but hey, you shouldn't look at the price but the opportunity to stand out amongst the competition) would have pointed that out long time ago.

Charging for mobile content, I sort of understand. Charging for regular web content? No way!

mrperfect:

well, profit orientated business is always out there to maximize a profit. mind you they just tested a business model.

And it failed woefully. They were formally the highest ranked Nigerian website on Alexa, now they are no longer in the top 10.

That is one of components of a new business strategy(either you gain or loose).

someone should have done some feasibility studies to first find out if any other papers our there did what they did. For choosing to ignore the most basic of business rules, they deserve to be where they are today.

Now it will take some time for people like me to regain their trust. Too bad, so sad.

well, well, well, nna. yawa una nor want make dem hama? ha ah. lolll psst talking of hama, when last did you visit http://www.websitenigeria.com? nor be only punch wan make money O. lol

Free or not! Doesn't seem to make any difference. The font of the print is just discouraging, I just find it difficult to go past the first paragraph.
The website isn't FANIMOROUS at all.

It appears as if the guys at punch have gotten back to their senses. I was surprised to find that they have repented of their childish ways. Who on earth in their right senses will pay to access a Newspaper's Website when the others offer theirs for free?

My thinking exactly! Whatelse do i want to read in punch that i wouldnt have read in vanguard, this day or guardian. Instead of paying that 1500, i wld rather be reading bogus saharareporters or Next free.

I told them when they started that rubbish. They even tried.

no mind them, bunch of backward clowns

imagine making peeps pay for online news, in this day and age

thats our problem in this country. we don't do thorough feasibility studies.

how can you try and outdo your competitors (who by the way have better sites and clout-thisday, guardian) by charging costs on your products when those of your competitors are for free??(i said it before that those clowns at the vanguard are a bunch of morons )

the first day i mistakingly/accidentally/regrettably  came across their site and when trying to read a story and i was asked to suscribe by paying, all i did was HISS  and close the page. since then i have not made such a mistake/gamble as to come within 100 yards of their site.


they for don leave am like that-make i see who go pay(except for the newspaper staff offcourse )

Hahhaha. I knew it will come to this. yeye people. Ah for me o. I still go there once in a while to check their headlines. I never knew they have stopped their madness. Make dem dash out their recharge cards to the closest museums around.

Ha ha ha ha, the yeye people are back. Their action made me to hate them and have even stopped physical purchase of their papers. They are ignorant of their competitors action. Their Business Development officer need to be flogged. WAZOBIA need to do that.

if a strategy for making money does not work, switch lanes, that is what the did, not too bad, at least they av seen the effects,

who wake them up from their drowsines, nonsense!, i dnt care weather they exist or not, sahara dey ther 4me jare, hisssss shiooo

lol, thought it was some kind of error when I was reading a full article. someone is now thinking straight.

anyhow,
-I dont understand why there are 2 navigation menu plus another 2 at the bottom of the page, doesnt make sense,
- why such a big header? i know am on punch site (i dont need a big logo to remind me) - waste of space -
- the scrolling text on red bar has a poor color combo, staring at it makes my eyes fuzzy
-why put an avatar in the "BLOGS" section on the right ? put title or excerpts, am not interested in seeing faces, again waste of valuable space
- the TOP STORY section is poorly formatted
- on OTHER TOP STORIES, i dont see any sense in hovering on the title and its changes the display on the left - if you want to display pictures, by all means, display it, if you want to display text or titles, then do so,  no need for fancy crap
- still on OTHER TOP STORIES, very frustrating to have a scroll bar in that section, use your wasted spaces to spell out the titles without have to put a scroll bar
- your videos on the PODCAST AND VIDEO section doesn't need to be that wide, if we want full screen, we will click that ourselves
- why have so many PLACE YOUR ADVERT HERE banners? seem redundant
- your "most read section" : make the titles appear on a single line, not have some on a line, another on 2 lines, and the rest on 3 lines. doesn't make it clean (same goes for the OTHER TOP STORIES section)
- the rest of the bottom section is so crowded and uninteresting, clean it up please
- make your "list-style-type" uniform, not have disc type some where and have circle type somewhere else
-whats up with the light blue background on some sections, and white background on other sections ?
- your "Contact us" link doesn't lead anywhere or maybe the page doesn't load up quickly - whatever is the case, no one wants to wait that long
- your server's response to other pages on your site is so slow, fix your SQL's abeg
- its a good thing you allow comments on your site, you can improve this by making your comment box more user friendly (will draw more traffic to your site)

ha, ha, ha! punchy clowns!

They must be experiencing the lowest patronage. Who even brought up the dumb idea of subscription, no feasibility study or anything, I am very sure nobody subscribed for it. Though the improvement on the site is a welcomed development. But make they no just try that nonsense again o!!

Abi o! No be the same news tribune dey report? Punks! I still trust their news sha.

To Whom It May Concern At Punch:
Are you reading these posts? In particular, are you keeping track of the number of people who have said that they had since stopped visiting your site and like me, will probably never visit again, except on a few rare occasions?

If this number indeed reflected the actual populace out there, I would say you guys are and will continue to lose some serious money. Pele o.

www.punchng.com- itself getting punched abi?

There is no harm in trying their LUCk, Now that they have push their Luck TOO FAR, Let us all wellcome them BACK to the Reality.

Well, at least they were smart enough to call it off when the experiment fizzled out interest on the site

utaroz/pastor:
1) That is the problem with luck sometimes - we get so "lucky" that it clouds out common sense
2) How long did it take to realize the problem? In a serious web shop setting, that BAD business decision would have been reversed no more than 1 week from the time it was launched, if not the next day.

. . . dem get luck. . .

Did they have an existing website before?

Not goona bust any bodies bubble but Rupert Murdoch has said all his papers will now have a paywall, so i think in future most of this papers will all have to be subscribed to, except we are going to read bbc alone,

It is true oh. Punch has regained their senses.

Oh.they should thank nairaland for even bringing it to our notice as I'd long forgotten how to type in their domain name,I even transferred the aggression to actual purchase of their dailies as I stopped buying their Saturday punch that was regular for me whenever I'm around