Well, first of all the new portal has to be launched. Sebastian is working on this. In this context we'll also move to a .com address (which we should have done 10 years ago really).
From there on we'll have to see whether the new portal can make a difference as far as the better support for mobile users is concerned ( I have some doubts there). Better ad placement (not more ads) and moving towards managed ads may help.
If not the paywall will be inevitable sometime in 2017. In theory - if each reader would contribute a single dollar per year we would be almost rich. ;-) However, 90% of the users would never ever do that. Thus it is the question whether the remaining 10% would be willing to pay -say- 5$ for an annual subscription. The problem with such an approach is, however, that readers would have hard expectations and providing guarantees is always tricky (server breakdown, human health, real world job assignment, whatever). Another option would be something like 50c per review.
There's also a promising startup where readers can pay a certain amount of money - say 5$. This would allow site access to participating websites for e.g. 10000 page views. The accumulated amount of money is then split according to the access rate between the participating websites. The problem here is, of course, that this startup has to generate a critical mass.
I can also imagine that the internet will be moving towards a closed internet with the internet. e.g. Facebook could start hosting websites with a business model behind it. Essentially a variation of the old AOL/compuserve approach if you remember those.
Thus there are a couple of options, trends and visions around all this. Honestly I (as a reader like you) would prefer to live with ads instead of bothering with all this. But obviously a very substantial amount of internet users have already voted against this.
From there on we'll have to see whether the new portal can make a difference as far as the better support for mobile users is concerned ( I have some doubts there). Better ad placement (not more ads) and moving towards managed ads may help.
If not the paywall will be inevitable sometime in 2017. In theory - if each reader would contribute a single dollar per year we would be almost rich. ;-) However, 90% of the users would never ever do that. Thus it is the question whether the remaining 10% would be willing to pay -say- 5$ for an annual subscription. The problem with such an approach is, however, that readers would have hard expectations and providing guarantees is always tricky (server breakdown, human health, real world job assignment, whatever). Another option would be something like 50c per review.
There's also a promising startup where readers can pay a certain amount of money - say 5$. This would allow site access to participating websites for e.g. 10000 page views. The accumulated amount of money is then split according to the access rate between the participating websites. The problem here is, of course, that this startup has to generate a critical mass.
I can also imagine that the internet will be moving towards a closed internet with the internet. e.g. Facebook could start hosting websites with a business model behind it. Essentially a variation of the old AOL/compuserve approach if you remember those.
Thus there are a couple of options, trends and visions around all this. Honestly I (as a reader like you) would prefer to live with ads instead of bothering with all this. But obviously a very substantial amount of internet users have already voted against this.