During the pre-internet days, news publishers had a captive audience. While some of them like The New York Times and The Washington Post still do, most others are facing fast dwindling numbers. In the U.S., weekday print circulation has shrunk from a high of nearly...
It seems like not a week goes by without another news organization announcing it’s launching either a subscription or membership platform. This week it was New York Media and Quartz; the former is rolling out a metered paywall, similar to what you’ll find on the...
A paywall – the method of restricting access to content via paid subscriptions – seems to be a trendy thing among publishers today. The New York Times has one.Bloomberg has one.Wired recently launched theirs. Even Medium has a paywall. Paid subscriptions are nothing new – people have subscribed to printed newspapers and...
In a world where consumers are accustomed to getting many digital goods for free—from apps to podcasts to instant facts online—convincing them to fork over funds for content remains a tough sell. And hanging on to those hard won customers is a challenge unto itself....
(Part One, ideas 1-12: Paywalls and Subscriptions) Publishers, both large and small, are constantly innovating in their efforts to ensure financial viability. Whether you’re a non-profit weekly newspaper in a small town, or a large-for profit Fortune 500 company, you cannot rest on your revenue...
For news publishers around the world, consumer revenue continues to be a pressing issue. With ad revenue falling year after year and usage of ad blockers on the rise, more and more publishers are employing a host of reader revenue strategies— including membership, subscriptions, paywalls...
Large newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post have started mastering the shift to digital, and are seeing their circulations surge, led by a growth in digital subscriptions. And now local newspapers, like The Seattle Times, are also catching up, with an...
The New Statesman is an iconic British magazine focusing on an intricate blend of politics and culture, albeit with a liberal, sceptical stance. Founded over 100 years ago, the title is a print-digital hybrid and whilst its circulation peaked in the mid-Sixties, it has witnessed...
Ever since the digital shift, publishers are actively looking for alternate sources of revenue, with membership and subscription fees becoming an increasingly more attractive source of revenue for publishers. The Daily Beast, an American news, politics and culture publication, is launching a paid membership service for the...
In an effort to cast light on the success media are enjoying in the digital subscription arena, FIPP has created the first Global Digital Subscription Snapshot. Covering nearly 10 million digital subscriptions by title, the report finds that paid content success requires investment, intelligent application of...
The notion of a digital newsstand is nothing new, but 2018 has seen a revival of the concept following several large shots in the arm, as publishers and platforms continue to seek new ways to engage users and monetise their products. What you need to...
Why are so many news publishers pivoting back to subs & paywalls? After all, they didn’t work for most of them before. We all know why. It’s because so many legacy media executives are like migratory birds. They tend to fly in one direction, following...
Publishers are pinning their hopes on paywalls as the primary means of supporting the journalism they produce. Last week the UK’s current affairs title The New Statesman was the latest publisher to announce its own metered paywall model, a move that prompted the editor of...
Iconic weekly politics and culture magazine New Statesman is following the lead of a number of prominent publishers by putting up a metered paywall. Later this March, readers will be required to register with an email address after hitting a limit of three articles a...
In an increasingly unstable media landscape, The Atlantic, a 161-year-old title is finding a path to success and sustainability. To aid in the expected growth editorially and on the business side in 2018, The Atlantic is now adding as many as 100 new staff members to the...
This month The New York Times reported subscription revenue at more than one billion dollars for 2017, accounting for 60 percent of the year’s total earnings. CEO Mark Thompson said on his February earnings call: “There are clear signs that our ‘subscription-first business model’ is proving to...
Metered paywalls are the most popular income idea to arise since the newspaper industry was flooded with low-budget competitors. It’s also a fundamentally flawed business model that goes against the best interests of journalists and their readers, and it’s doomed to fail. Why? The paywall is...
Developing video strategies for their own platforms is more important than ever for publishers in the wake of Facebook’s latest news-feed algorithm purge. Welt is testing new video features and products designed to keep people on site. In the past few weeks, the publisher made the link...
The pink financial paper has used online subscriptions since 2002. After decades of diminishing ad returns, fellow digital publishers are finally catching on. Late last year, the Financial Times reached a pretty big milestone: It exceeded 900,000 paying subscriptions, both print and digital–up from 780,000...
