Paying For Your Chiefs News?

Btw,

Maybe you should put the word out here on AP that you need content from training camp. I’ll bet that there are more than a few APers that would gladly pass along info from the days that you are not there.

I agree with you about the Gretz paywall. Not sure what he is thinking with that. Most folks that I have talked to about paying for sports news come away disappointed with what they get and stop paying, never to pay again. This model doesn’t work very well unless you are giving info or insight of value. Training camp news, while interesting to us homers, doesn’t really meet that requirement.

Ill try to cover a couple of them

Didn’t Roy Williams say the same thing….lol hope you guys stand by your word

Miss ya bro. Any ways arrowheadpride is just way to good very good coverage and its free thanks joel and friends

I pay roughly what Bob is charging to stream unlimited music, which I think is a much more valuable service than Chiefs news that I can find other places for free.

You’re right that nobody is going to pay for news, but for original content, I think at least some will. With Bob it’s kind of a grey area. Most of what he does is reporting on the events with the team, but he does offer his own opinions & side-stories as well. $25 per year isn’t much considering how much time he puts into his work…7 days a week during the regular season. I think his success will depend a lot on the popularity of the Chiefs.

As for AP, I see this (great) site as more of a news/opinion aggregation portal and forum. AP & SBNation as a whole, I would think, can work on the ad-based model because it is more of a news site. People will hit AP multiple times per day for news/talk…people will hit Gretz once, maybe twice a day. Probably hard to live on ad revenue with that kind of traffic.

I’ll probably pay the $25, as a thanks to Bob for doing what he does.

The Chiefs? 101? I heard he was paying his own way to road games but also heard that Petterson was still paying him.

But he should’ve really looked more toward monetizing through ad support.

I only occasionally go to his site, and that’s usually when it’s linked here at AP.

Pretty much 0% chance of me frequenting it now, honestly.

Yeah right, Primetime is a bigger sell out than Peyton Manning.

mark it down

After months of unsuccessful attempts to recruit the lucrative sports blog advertiser, Beer Glove, Inc., Bob Gretz has decided to go with a paid subscription site.

Beer Glove revenues launched the popular Arrowhead Pride site, making early retirement a possibility for the brothers Thorman. The Thormans continue to blog simply for pleasure these days.

If you could manage to make it up to the training camp practices or, at the very least, put together a team that would cover all of the practices, this would be a great time from AP and SBNation’s Kansas City site to swipe a bit of Gretz’s marketshare.

I mean, not all of his readers are going to want to pay but they are all going to want the content he’d normally provide. Step in and provide it to them — for the same price they’d been paying for it (ie: free) — and you’ve got a chance to grab a bunch of new readers.

I have an iPhone, so I can send tweets and pics.

There are too many alternative sources for what he provides.

It works for the Wall Street Journal because they supply specific financial info that isn’t so readily available elsewhere.

The man feels as though he is creating a unique product and he has every right to seek profit from it. The big question is, will the market agree? I don’t think it will and his premium membership site will eventually fail. He needs to either sell his work to a big blog employer that already brings in revenue via advertisement or work harder to create a revenue stream based on advertising. I like Bob and enjoy his writing, but this is just a bad business move.

As a Chiefs “die hard fan” I could not ignore the fact that Bob offers insight, perspective & accuracy in his reporting that is second to none. I love AP, the Thorman bros. & many of you active commentors. As far as I am concerned, he is still the top dog when it comes to Chiefs players, Game analysis & his Colorful opinions, let alone his historic loyalty to my favorite team.

I don’t like the idea so much to pay for his info. But, my world is a better place with him than without him.

So I’m not really concerned. I think he’s going to lose a lot of readers though. <3 the Thormans.

Because ignoring Google, Facebook, Youtube, Blogspot, Gawker, SBNation, UPROXX & Twitter's start-up models is always a good idea

Joel and Chris should send out a covert AP spec ops unit to abduct Bob, and brainwash him into working for AP. I volunteer to lead this team :0

But Bob may be going to a subscription model because he can’t monetize his traffic numbers, i.e. he doesn’t get enough traffic to warrant advertisers using his site.

That’s my guess.

My Family lives on a thin shoestring budget, so want to or not I won’t be buying in to Gretz site. AP and email are the only things I religiously check on line anyway. I love Bob but I love you guys more!

What if we got a sign-up sheet, a la our fantasy teams/reports, for people who are already planning on attending camp. They could just indicate the day that they are going and report throughout that day on the happenings as well as a roundup in the evening. Just a thought.

This way, we could cover the entire camp without relying too much on one individual.

It was talked about putting together an AP group capable of gathering training camp news for the Thormans.

Good idea, but what happens after camp? Is training camp the only time Gretz receives inside information over our managers here at AP? Will Gretz be able to provide us with more pre, reg, and postseason? I was under the impression Joel had more marbles after his KCSB hire.

Besides offseason/training camp insider news what will this $25 get me during the season that I can’t get from AP? I’m already drowned with perspectives trying to keep up with all you APers.

I already deleted the bobgretz.com link from my favorites menu. I am firmly entrenched in the “if you’re charging for news, F-U, i’ll find it somewhere else” party. Not gonna do it….

….it would be Jamarcus Russell.

Both think they’re great, both gained a ton of weight, and nobody cares to pay either one.

If you want to make money off of providing information, that is what advertisers are for. Charge money for information, and eventually your information will still get spread for free anyway because the internet is unstoppable. All it takes is one person with access to share it with another.

And based on the reaction here it doesn’t really sound like it’s going to work out.

I do value his contribution to Chiefs fans though. He often goes beyond reporting news & actually profiles players. Without Bob we are pretty much stuck with Bill Williamson…who is really a joke relative to Gretz. Speaking of that, it would actually be nice if ESPN would hire Bob to do Bill’s blog there, I think he’d do a much better job (all bias aside).

and appreciate it, Joel. I, like you, do not find it very fair to the public to pay for news. This is and will continue to be my site for Chiefs news. You all do an outstanding job, and for that, I am thankful…