Category Archive: 'newspaper paywalls'

Paywalled Aggregator Backed By ‘Big Newspaper’ Shuts Down

Date: May 11, 2012 Topic: newspaper paywalls, Subscription Business Model Tags: , , , ,

As we mentioned in our last post, marketing to niche audiences is a great way for general news pubs to rake in online dollars.

But what about the flip side — paywalled aggregators?

There haven’t been many to choose from, but a year and a half ago, The New York Times Co., The Washington Post Co., and Gannett invested $4 million each in Ongo, an online news aggregator with a paywall.

But Ongo had a confusing subscription offering, with a basic service that included “selected” content. Subscribers then had to pay more for individual publications, priced at different rates. In addition, much of the content was available free on the Web through other sites or metered paywalls. And so now, sadly, Ongo is shutting down.

Ongo’s strength may have been that subscribers could access their content from  multiple devices — desktop, tablet, mobile — and have an ad-free reading experience. As Ongo founder Alex Kazim said in an interview with paidContent last year: “We realized that users won’t pay for content — however, they will pay for a better user experience.”

Even though we disagree with the first half of Kazim’s statement (and have ample evidence to the contrary), there’s wisdom in the latter part of his statement for all of us. Failure makes for great lessons. In Ongo’s case, the technology was well-suited to reader behavior. It’s just that the marketing and pricing were off and couldn’t course correct in time to satisfy Ongo’s ‘Big Newspaper’ investors.

Posted by MinalB21
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Christian Science Monitor Makes Paywall Work With Analysis, Not Breaking News

Date: May 2, 2012 Topic: Hybrid Model, newspaper paywalls Tags: , , , , ,

Three years ago, the Christian Science Monitor decided to go “digital-first” and learn to swim in the new media environment. It’s a strategy that’s paid off as the paper abandoned its 5-day-a-week print paper for a weekly magazine (that’s now available on the iPad and eReaders) and Web content.

What the Monitor didn’t do was try to compete with breaking news television or Web aggregators like the Huffington Post. Instead, it stuck to its mission of providing contextual analysis and original, global content. It also decreased its use of multi-media platforms, including video (the site still has some video but now works with a production partner), and included polls and quizzes that tickle intellectuals.

By doing this, the Monitor has been able to grow its page views to 42 million a month (8 to 10 million are unique views). And both ad sales and content sales grew by 50% in the last year.

It’s a strong model that other news sites should look to. Most of us can’t be the New York Times and evolve into a large, multi-media news conglomerate in order to stay relevant. But we can play to our strengths, charging premium prices for signature content. And given that people often troll the Web for more in-depth analysis on their favorite subjects, it’s a great way to play to strength of online media without becoming a software company.

Posted by MinalB21
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NY Times Subscription Model Hailed A Success: Fact or PR?

Date: March 20, 2012 Topic: newspaper paywalls, Subscription Business Model Tags: , , ,

Surprise, surprise, the New York Times paywall works! Or so the pundits say.

On the second anniversary of the paywall’s implementation, NYT boasts 390,000 digital subscribers, 30% higher than their internal benchmark, and Ken Doctor estimates that brings in $86 million in revenue for the Gray Lady.

However, that 390,000 number seems a bit inflated, with NYT giving print subscribers access to digital content for free. Management seems particularly gleeful that the paywall has increased home-delivery rates, as if this is all a clever ruse to bring back newspaper-inked hands at breakfast. Clearly they haven’t read our sister site’s case study on Consumer Reports, which smartly values its digital content by getting print subscribers to pay separately for online access.

The Times has done some smart things, though, like their single-day promotions for Cyber Monday and deal with Ford to “gift” their first 100,000 subscribers, thus inflating their year-one numbers to skeptical audiences (NYT says it had good conversion rates after the promo ended, but no numbers). And while general media commentators seem cautionary, warning that subscriptions can’t be a solitary revenue stream (nor make up for lost revenue from bad business practices), our readers have known that for some time.

So congrats to the Gray Lady for catching up with the (paywall) times. And congrats to you, dear reader, for being smarter than them.

PS: For a great behind-the-scenes look at how incredibly boring it is to implement a paywall launch and track it in real-time, read Joe Pompeo’s piece in Capital.

Posted by MinalB21
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PEJ Study Highlights Search for Paid Content Business Models

Date: March 12, 2012 Topic: newspaper paywalls, Subscription Business Model Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released its report last week on the financial standing of the country’s newspapers, and for the most part, it’s not good news. Or more pointedly, it’s not good news for traditional media business models.

As we’ve known for a long time, the report confirms the poor performance of advertising dollars online in comparison to print advertising. But the more insidious problem maybe the ongoing culture wars between legacy-nostalgic staff and digital-friendly colleagues.

The Neiman Foundations’s summary of the study and ensuing commentary makes a case for the growing momentum for paywalls — recently instituted at the LA Times, Providence Journal, and Gannett. But the more telling development may be the LA Times’s decision to call its subscription service not a paywall, but a membership option. Whether that changes the perception of paywalls and paying for content is yet to be determined, as Spot.us’s David Cohn points out.

What does it all mean? Mostly, that you’re not alone in trying to navigate the changing media landscape, and that you’re probably ahead of the curve by adopting a subscription business model. We’ll continue to update you on what the big media companies are doing and how you can replicate it for your site — and if you should. After all, what works for the big media companies may or may not work for niche publications. But that’s why you have us as your friendly tour guide.

Posted by MinalB21
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Video: Tomas Bella on Creating a National Paywall

Date: March 5, 2012 Topic: newspaper paywalls Tags: , , , ,

We’ve blogged before about the recent success of Piano Media‘s national paywalls in Slovakia and Slovenia, which allow subscribers to get seamless access to most of the country’s news outlets. Here’s an interview with Piano Media’s CEO Tomas Bella, conducted by Bill Baker, President Emeritus of Channel Thirteen/WNET, the PBS affiliate in New York.

In this brief video, Baker asks Bella how the system works and what makes it unique.

“It works pretty similar to the cable TV model, where … you can put a subscription to the site for roughly 3, 4, 5 euros per month,” Bellas explains. “And when you buy it, you automatically get access to all the major print media in the country and to all the content.”

When asked if he had any trouble getting subscribers, Bella responded: “You will have one group of people who understand the value of content, who understand the need for work and so on, so they will sign up immediately, before they know what is in the system, so that’s the first group, which is quite easy to monetize, if you do the system right. Then you have a second, usually much, much larger group of people, who are not strictly against paying. So when we have a publisher who had a paying system before, … the number jump up very quickly in the first few days. If you have a publisher who’s charging for the first time, the number steadily increase, but you need some months, maybe a year, until you get to some really very interesting revenues.”

Bella was also asked about the fact that Piano Media bundles newspapers with very different political views and whether this has been a problem for subscribers. Bella said that some people see competing papers in the same bundle and don’t want a penny of their money going to them. Bella then explained that “the way the system works is that your money only goes to the [sites] you are using. When we explain that if you’re not going to the site, then people are not getting money from you, then people are happy.”

See the video for Bella’s additional answers to questions about whether this model could work for other countries, what promises they made to publishers, and why Piano Media has created a partnership model instead of licensing its technology to publishers (Hint: Unlike most tech companies, Piano Media seems to have figured out that publishers don’t need more technological tools, they need advice on how to harness technology to monetize their content).

Posted by MinalB21
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