Subscription Website Publishing posts focus on how to build and operate a premium subscription website, including how to best align and repurpose your content, increase subscription orders, and best practices for subscription website architecture.
Most of the subscription business model facts you usually hear likely pertain to percentages and numbers that don’t apply to you and instead reflect someone else’s business. But the ten facts below give you permission to take a step toward progress in subscription marketing and try things from a new angle.
1. You can increase revenue per order
A funny thing happened on the way to today’s post. While doing keyword research to discover what you, our audience, call the top of your website, we found some disagreement. Various posts at other websites, from Wikipedia to a variety of design blogs, use different terminology to describe the top of the website. Website header
Back in the 1990s, many publishers distributed their controlled-circulation or free magazine as a download from their website or something they would send out as an attachment to an email. The PDF format made these new magazines easy to read on any device as long as the user had access to a PDF reader that
An effective technique in digital content marketing is “self-liquidating premiums”—having the value of premiums exceed the entire purchase price of your product.
For example, let’s assume you have a product, perhaps a downloadable book with a list price of $49.97. You’re selling it online at a discounted purchase price of $29.97.
Let’s also assume you’re giving away three
Membership websites are defined in part by the fact that users access the content on-demand, when they have a question they need to be answered or a learning tool they need to access. A membership subscription website archetype provides paid members with a library of information on a specific topic of interest or a cluster of
Creating the best subscription website business models starts with understanding your minimum information units—both the free minimum information units you’ll use to build a loyal audience and the premium minimum information units you’ll use to build your premium information product or products.
A minimum information unit or MIU is the smallest piece of a publisher’s content that
Happy 300th anniversary to the newspaper publishing industry! The first official American newspaper, Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick was shut down after only its first issue in 1690, so the true “business” of newspapers began in 1721 with the New England Courant, and the presses have been running ever since.
The difference between a business
Mequoda’s Haven WordPress system is a digital publishing and marketing system for subscription websites that will ultimately be one of many successful digital publishing business models deployed online that are or will be the successors to print magazine publishing. That said, it’s always fun to explore the content frameworks and user journey for someone who
A magazine subscription website model is set up to sell subscriptions for a related print or digital magazine and to provide access to back issues and other premium content.
For the past 20 years, our team has been working in online publishing with the top subscription-based websites. This has given us a deep understanding of what
A couple of years ago, Don outlined the attributes of a premium content subscription: not a website itself, but the thing that customers buy – the content subscription.
In updating this post (as we often do with our website content – a Mequoda best practice), we decided to give you an actual example of the perfect
As someone who’s looked at your website every day for a long time, you probably have no business reviewing your own website. There are probably things in the back of your mind that you’ve kept a mental checklist of – items that need to be optimized, altered and updated. Have you been writing these things
You would have to be living under a rock to have not noticed that premium membership programs for publishers are all the rage. After flirting with all forms of digital advertising, magazine, newsletter and website publishers have concluded that consumers will pay for premium content.
If you’re one of the hundreds of magazine publishers who are still giving away your magazine content, it’s probably time to stop and think about using that content to sell premium membership website subscriptions.
The evolution from print magazine publishing to digital magazine publishing has been accelerated by the pandemic. The trend has been in motion
We all have a need to feel taken care of. How many things do you buy to fill that need?
Don’t we go to a restaurant not just for the food but to be treated like royalty? What really matters is what they do to help us feel nurtured.
Every purchase is a symbol for emotional satisfaction.
In recent years, publishers have been testing paywall pricing, and for good reason. Hearst, for example, tested a paywall that changed based on what the reader was consuming. Instead of letting editors choose which content was free, and which was premium, the habits of first-time readers predict when they should hit a paywall and are
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all content management system. The best CMS for a magazine should be built with a publisher in mind. After all, you have a different business model than a software company, e-tailer, or a small business using the same CMS, which is often the case with some of the household
If you look at Shorenstein Center and Lenfest Institute’s Digital Pay-Meter Playbook, you’ll discover that one key metric you can measure, which identifies high-performing publishers, is your “stop rate.”
Your stop rate is quite simply, the percentage of users “stopped” by a paywall (or metered paywall, or a floater). According to the Playbook, if you’re over 6%, you’re
Since 2006 we have held these fourteen guidelines as the most fundamental principles of the best website design.
Every website is unique to its own audience, so you can’t include things like the best colors to use, or anything that will tell you exactly how to design a site. What we’ve put together is a report
Successful website homepage design allows visitors to achieve their goals
Is your website properly designed to meet the expectations of your visitors? Often times websites encourage visitors to take an additional step, be it a request for more information, a visit to a different web page found at the website, or the step of making a
If you want to convert more website visitors into new members for your membership website, or any type of subscription website, write compelling copy. Use emotional copywriting to twist their heartstrings (eharmony.com) or tap into all the ways your product will benefit the new member (ladders.com).
Below are some wise tips from our Executive Content Director
Slow loading web pages can mean turning customers away from your landing pages and ultimately from buying yor products.
One of the most profitable subscription website business models is a magazine subscription website.
It’s not because it’s cheaper to build, or brings in substantially more revenue than other business models, it’s more profitable because once your platform is up and running, you can recycle content you’ve already paid for, and create a content bundle that’s
Portals are seen most often because not only are they a profitable model on their own, they’re also intended to build and feed an audience for affiliated premium subscription websites. They are specifically designed for SEO, email marketing, list building, lead generation and building engagement and loyalty. It’s a Mequoda best practice to build a
Our clients publish in many different niches: food, investing, archaeology, environmental infrastructure, natural health and clinical pathology among many others. When they first come to us, they have nothing in common with one another, but after working with us for six months to a year, they all have one thing in common: a Google Visibility
Landing pages are fickle. You can change the color of a button and it can increase conversion rates by 30% or more. You can change the headline on your landing page and see conversion rates tank. But landing page storytelling is dangerously simple.
Words are more than just symbols on a page that provide information. They communicate thoughts and ideas. They speak to the human psyche. They evoke emotions. But they don’t do any of these things very well if they aren’t chosen carefully. Before you try out any other subscription website copywriting tips, it’s a good idea
If you’re launching a new website, or re-launching an existing website, you have the opportunity to choose a website domain name that can help you drive new and repeat traffic. Having been through this process a few hundred times, I thought I would share some thoughts on the factors you might consider when choosing a
Follow these landing page guidelines for your vanity URLs so that people can both remember you and find you organically
You know the importance of landing pages, but it’s completely possible that you don’t know how important your vanity URLs are. Vanity URLs that are too long, don’t make sense, or are hard to read can
If you’re a publisher, or are selling a subscription-based information product, it’s likely that at some point you’ll be looking for a new membership site developer. We know this because most of our publishing partners have come to us after years of trying to “build a Mequoda System” themselves, using a developer unfamiliar with our
In the words of David Ogilvy, “a good advertisement is one that sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” And when selling a web magazine, one of the best ways to do so, is by giving away enough content that it basically sells itself, but not so much that visitors don’t convert into subscribers.
Your metadata doesn’t matter anymore … Just kidding. It does, sort of.
Recently one of our clients noticed that the metadata they were putting into their articles wasn’t necessarily the data that was getting pulled into Google search results.
In days of old, metadata was valuable. It’s what Google used to determine the content on our pages.
Make sure your landing pages answer this question for your users: “what’s in it for me?”
Managing email marketing has become an increasingly critical issue for every type of business. Publishers, like everyone else, use email to communicate with customers and prospective customers, on a regular basis. But like all powerful tools, email can be mismanaged and cause a lot of harm too. Do you have a good email management system?
The four-legged stool technique for marketing your business was developed originally by Bill Bonner of Agora Publishing, specifically for selling financial newsletters. However, these four elements also work when selling 90 to 95 percent of all information products.
The concept is pretty simple: a four-legged stool is very stable. If you pull one leg off, it’s
As we continue to explore the evolving art and science of digital magazine publishing, I thought I’d take a few minutes today to do a deep dive into the technology stack and software partners that we’ve selected for our new Food Gardening Network digital magazine publishing system.
Perhaps it goes without saying that there are literally
Unlike most other marketers, those in subscription marketing can sell the same product at different prices each time it’s purchased. Our customers buy a new subscription from us at one price, and then we can use a different price to get them to renew the first time. We might even use yet another price for
One of the best ways to discover how you can create a successful digital publishing and marketing system for your publication is to look at how other similar publishers plan, build, operate, and optimize their systems.
Over the past 25 years, our team has guided the design of more than 300 successful digital publishing and marketing
Since you’re reading this message, you may have some idea of how our organization helps publishers plan, develop, operate, and optimize successful website systems. We thought we’d take a few moments today to share the various types of relationships we have with publishing organizations in the hopes that one or some of these might be
Increasing your website’s Google visibility and doubling or even tripling your website traffic in 12 months is a scientific process. More than 15 years ago, we created a step-by-step program that helps publishers of all sizes to significantly increase their Google visibility and organic website traffic. It has become the first pillar in what we
If you’re a publisher who maintains multiple websites, making the correct choice of a subscription management system is one of the most important decisions you’ll make, because doing it over and over again cuts into your profits and resources. We’ve watched numerous multi-website publishers trap themselves into a path that was too expensive to upgrade
Data analytics are critical for the success of your multiplatform publishing business. Your website, email and social media efforts are all used to promote your content and make more money for your business. It’s impossible to track every article manually, so you need to use web analytics tools to measure effectiveness.
Data has always been an
Think selling magazines is hard? Look at Netflix. They’ve been able to get customers to pay $9+ per month as a membership website for over a decade. Disney+ signed up ten million subscribers for their $7/mo streaming service, on their very first day.
Meanwhile, magazines have a hard time getting people to dish out $10 for
Do you feel like being quarantined at home more than usual has made you want to gather more than ever? We miss attending events and meeting new people who love working in this industry as much as we do. Normally, in just a few months we’d be meeting in Boston with you or publishers like
In digital marketing, you might have been told “free” is a dirty word. In subject lines, it could get you blacklisted (it won’t) or in social media, it’s over-used (free is still better than paid). However, giving away something for free is one of the best ways to start a relationship, and when it comes
“Our global audience is not interested in another local news source…Our signature journalism is the biggest draw.” These were the words of a former associate managing editor at The New York Times back in 2017 who also oversaw NYT Global. And despite denying claims that the “Trump Bump” increased sales during the election, the numbers show that international
Are you like most publishers, who want to know how to best leverage their existing subscription website to convert more visitors into email subscribers, but aren’t sure what to test or where to start?
If yes, then you’re in luck, because at Mequoda we develop, design, and write copy for email capture conversion elements that are
From time to time, it’s a good idea to sit down and think about the value proposition you provide prospective buyers in your subscription marketing efforts. When you are running a Six Sigma subscription marketing program, you will have ample opportunity to test your ideas. We at Mequoda have the privilege of marketing dozens of premium
When walking in to a massive library or bookstore, it’s hard to decide what to look at without becoming instantly overwhelmed by all the possibilities. The same goes for an online web library for your magazine or newsletter, and if you aren’t effectively capturing subscribers’ attention regularly, renewal rates can slip. Reminding them of what
Twenty years ago, “above the fold” only referred to the upper half portion of a newspaper. Now, above the fold can be applied to many things, especially a website or web magazine, and the first screen of content a user will see when they go to your website.
We’ve discussed how savvy publishers are combining their legacy magazine subscriptions with magazine libraries to create magazine memberships online. Now we’ll we take a look at how publishers can use contrast pricing and the principles of economic behaviorism to maximize revenue and retention rates. Specifically, we’ll show you the strategies that resulted in revenue increases from 50% to 130%
