Maybe the New York Times should rethink its strategy to charge readers for access to its website starting in 2011.

Newsday, put up a pay wall on its website back in October.

The result?

Only 35 subscribers have paid $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to its website newsday.com.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but in order to charge people for access, you have to  have  exclusive content that people find valuable enough to pay for.

That means editors and publishers need to do their homework and find out what parts of your site (if any) visitors are willing to pay for.

If they’re not willing to pay for it then you need to 1) get as many eyeballs to their site as possible (this means having good content) 2) sell online ads, and 3) make sure those ads are placed right creative enough that people will notice them and 4) use online conversion tools to convert as many of those visitors into leads for your customers.

If you can supply advertisers with a steady stream of leads and customers to their website, you can become very profitable.

Once newspapers figure this out, they’ll stop hemorrhaging red ink.

Are Super Bowl ads worth the price? After two decades of advertising during the big game, Pepsi no longer things so.

Pepsi, which has spent an estimated $254.2 million in Super Bowl ads over the past 20 years, startled the industry a few weeks ago by announcing the cola for the next generation won’t participate in America’s national football marketing extravaganza. Instead, the soft drink company will pour millions of dollars into an online project meant to build connections over time by reaching consumers through blogging, Facebook and Twitter. It plans to distribute more than $20 million in community grants, voted on by Web users.

Pepsi’s doing the right thing. 

While Super Bowl ads can be a great way to launch a new product, service, or get your company’s name out there, they’re also very risky. Unless you have the commercial that everyone’s talking about after the game and can clearly explain your product combined with a great call to action in 30 seconds or less, there’s no guarantee you’ll see a positive ROI from your ad spend. Conversions, after all, are the name of the game.

Pepsi already has name and product recognition-something Super Bowl ads can help promote. What they need is more people drinking their products and telling their friends and neighbors how good those products are.

By funneling their money into online marketing efforts, not only will Pepsi be able to connect with its customers and better determine the ROI from their ad spend.

It remains to be seen how successful Pepsi finds its online marketing efforts. But given how online adverting is becoming more targeted and companies are finding ways to funnel people into their sales pipeline, Pepsi made the right decision.