Loot Goes Mostly Free Online

Chalk another newspaper business-model change to the influence of free ads from the likes of Craigslist, which is expanding worldwide. As Katja Riefler reports for the latest issue of Classified Intelligence Report (a paid newsletter), the British free-classifieds newspaper and website Loot has made its ads available for free on the Web.

Loot is a newspaper that accepts ads for free, but charges for subscriptions and single-copy sales. Its website used to allow you to see the ads free, but you’d have to pay to see contact information (once you found an ad to which you wished to respond). With the new model, Loot on the Web allows you to see ads and get contact information for free.

How does Loot make money on the Web? Riefler explains that if advertisers want their listings posted longer than 48 hours, then they must pay.

Loot is a division of Associated Newspapers, which also publishes the Daily Mail, Evening Standard, and other papers. Loot‘s newspaper is published in seven regions of the U.K., with a national circulation of 120,000. In London, the paper is published every weekday.