Tag: digital subscriptions

Headlines have been brimming lately with news publishers like The New York Times, The Guardian and Wired taking back their profits with paywalls and paid content. The New York Times made 60% of last year’s revenue from subscription sales, The Guardian’s 800,000 subscribers are now accounting for more revenue than advertisers, and Wired has followed their lead by instituting a new $20 annual subscription. It’s clear that publishers are no longer afraid to charge for content, and subscription revenue goals are at the forefront. And I think there are three reasons for it.

Your membership site developer should be more than just a technological jester, they should be your sherpa.
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 clients have come to us after years

A publisher’s minimum information unit (MIU) is the bedrock on which the best multiplatform membership website models are built.

How to use web editions, collections and libraries to double your revenue 
Are you still selling your magazine on one platform? Sure, print magazines smell good and even look good on a coffee table, but the most successful subscription and membership marketers we know are leveraging more than paper to increase profits.

What are they doing exactly? They’re

The most effective blow-in cards of the 21st century aren’t made of cardstock, they’re digital. And since offering a sample of your magazine is less effort for the user when it’s done online, you have more opportunities.

In this week’s Freebie Friday spotlight, Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda, explains why using monthly pricing to accommodate a user’s desire to sample, is just one key to selling more subscriptions. From there you can download How to Use Contrast Pricing to Increase Subscription Revenue to learn more about pricing your print and digital magazine subscriptions.

If you’re making plans for your own digital publication, it behooves you to also plan how to make money from it with strategic digital magazine marketing.

After all, buying a list and mailing a big direct mail package, in hopes of getting a bunch of people to subscribe as we all did in the old print days, is rather like trying to sell 21st-century tablets themselves at an old-fashioned general store where hardware, ladies’ hats and pickles all shared the same space, and the proprietor fetched everything on your list, then wrapped up your purchases in brown paper and twine.

Only five years after the advent of the tablet, strategies for successful digital magazine publishing are starting to sort themselves out and deliver measurable results. Of course at Mequoda, we’re all about documenting these things so digital publishers don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

Here are 10 things you must do if you want to join the ranks of millionaire publishers … a goal we think is worthy of all digital publishers today.

How often do you read something digitally? If you’re reading this, then you’ve done it at least once today. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this isn’t your first time.

More multiplatform publishers are seeing firsthand the value of subscription products and paywalls, which is why many new ones are launched. Today we’re looking at some of these paywall and subscription app launches, and the reasons these digital publishers are turning their attention to them.

Digital publishers will continue to establish and evolve their membership websites as products, tools, and software options lead to successful revenue streams. Today we’re visiting publishers who have made new advances in their subscription offerings recently.

Multiplatform publishing companies that have made the digital landscape their home are able to experience advantages that other traditional publishers have not. Doing this, however, requires having the right people with the right places. Today we’re reporting on hires, promotions, and department focus for some digital publishers.

The millennial demographic is one publishers often wonder about. Considering millennials into an audience development plan is a great idea for publishers, and we’re now seeing some interesting evolutions in the way millennials are paying for news. Yes, you read that correctly. More millennials are subscribing to news, including print, more than we’ve seen before.

As digital publishers continue to iron out their audience and product strategies, the ones doing it the best are seeing growth in areas that matter: digital subscriptions and sales.

Our first story today looks at New York Times and its better-than-anticipated second quarter. WWD reports, “Total revenue for the second quarter of 2017 increased 9.2 percent to $407.1 million from $372.6 million in the second quarter of 2016 and subscription revenues increased 13.9 percent, while advertising revenues increased 0.8 percent and other revenues rose 12.8 percent. Wall Street expected 14 cents a share on revenue of $393.9 million.”

Ask yourself these seven questions before starting your journey towards digital magazine transformation
I’m going to go ahead and assume if you’re reading this, you have a print publication who is asking for siblings. You’re at the magazine store and it’s eying the “big brother” t-shirts and wondering when it’s getting playmates.

Below you’ll find a comprehensive

Condé Nast U.S. expands subscription business; Amazon’s subscription service becomes an option; Subscription websites need to utilize ads that don’t violate rules
Subscription websites expand in a multitude of ways. Of course, as expansion takes places, there are always other issues to address. However, sometimes the levels of expansion are significant, and major multiplatform publishers can

Zink digital magazine relaunches; National Geographic launches digital network; Amazon looking at offering subscriptions to publishers
Not all the digital magazine content we report on involves launches. Sometimes we have relaunches to share about, too.

We begin today with the relaunch of Zink Magazine, in both digital and print. WWD reports, “Zink Magazine, the indie fashion magazine founded

Digital magazine marketing will give you an afterlife

There are times in business when we feel like we’ve created something great, and we don’t understand why it’s not selling.

Back in 1967, a successful New York ballerina by the name of Marta Becket stumbled upon an old social hall in Death Valley Junction, California, population: 6. After

Master the art of marketing digital magazines and bundles by learning about why readers subscribe to digital magazines
Several years ago we ran a study that showed us the majority of magazine consumers were subscribing to digital magazines because they felt paper magazines were wasteful and they wanted to “go green.” A full 52% of respondents said

Magazines with the most mobile traffic have great mobile magazine websites and social-friendly content
The Association of Magazine Media recently stated that on average, magazine websites are getting 26% of their traffic from mobile. According to AdWeek, “The MPA’s monthly Magazine Media 360° report dissected publishers’ online traffic in July and compared it with traffic from a

Subscription publishers love to see surges, and that’s what’s happening at Washington Post, New York Times, and LA Times
We love to report on successes in the publishing world, and what better to report than subscription publishers seeing increases in the sizes of their audiences.

The Columbia Journalism Review is reporting on two publishers that have increased

As the mobile publishing revolution has matured, I’ve been blogging about a lot of large, fancy digital magazines. Publications like New York, Forbes and The Atlantic have become leaders in what I consider the second phase of mobile publishing development – the technology is dependable, early jumpers are releasing their all-new versions upgraded from their 2010 efforts, and standards for what consumers are willing to pay for are establishing themselves.

An uptick in digital newspaper subscriptions seen by major publications since the U.S. presidential election 
Major newspapers approached the U.S. presidential election in an interesting way. Some of these newspapers, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, took their paywalls down. Others, like The Wall Street Journal, decided to keep its paywall up, and

These new digital subscriptions are focused on building engagement with readers through different strategies
We continue to see new digital subscriptions arise among subscription websites. Some of these new subscriptions are focuses on changes made by existing publications, while others are completely new ventures being offered to audiences.

The Telegraph, for instance, is one digital subscription getting

Magazine pricing strategy has certainly evolved quickly over the past year. In 2013, we still believed that universal pricing was the best way to handle print, website and tablet products. Today, we’ve evolved our own thinking and our new Best Practice is decoy pricing, which requires different prices for different products.

Economist tests social platforms and axes Pinterest and Tumblr, hones Twitter, and dives in LinkedIn.
According to Digiday, The Economist recently “axed its ailing Pinterest and Tumblr accounts while ramping up its commitment to LinkedIn.” We’ve all been there right. For a lot of publishers, especially those in B2B, it’s Facebook that they’re questioning. Beyond limited reach to

The paywall model comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors and all can be profitable for publishers when the content is good.

A recent article from Mediapost claims 40% of millennials personally pay for news (print or digital). Pay for news, you say? We think, when looking at the ratio of print to digital, that many of

Spending on print ads to decline 8.7%, and the majors in newspaper publishing are planning for the future
A decade or two ago in newspaper publishing, it wasn’t easy to get ad space in The Wall Street Journal. There was limited space and they were almost always sold out. However, over the last decade, magazines and

These audience development models create marketing-qualified leads through freemiums that build larger, more monetizable email lists

“Audience development” is one of those terms that many people instinctively understand, but usually underestimate. Although media professionals have worked with the term for years, most have not bothered to define all the things that go on when executing an

Multiplatform consumers give us a glimpse into digital and print magazines as consumption of digital grows year over year
In our annual American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook survey, we set out to understand how the demographics of a multiplatform consumer (one who reported consuming both print and digital magazines) differed from digital only readers and print only readers.

We learned that

Every publisher should develop an audience development program specifically for social that stretches throughout the year
Previously, the only purpose of building an audience was to sell print subscriptions. Now, publishers are looking to sell digital subscriptions, develop leads for sponsors, increase memberships, and build communities. As the uses for your audience have expanded, so have

The media companies making news around magazine advertising trends include the Guardian, Financial Times, and more
Magazine advertising trends may not make for the most exciting material, but they’re important to monitor amid a climate that includes such pressing issues as ad blocking, viewability issues, targeting, and advancing technology, particularly on the mobile ad front.

With the

Getting insight on digital marketing metrics from comScore, The Economist, the Atlantic Leap, and others
Getting a grasp on digital marketing metrics is crucial for multiplatform publishers looking to maximize the opportunities online magazines afford media companies.

But the thing about digital marketing metrics is that they’re shape-shifting. There are flavors of the month when it comes

Repurposing publisher content is a best practice that all Mequoda Members do as a matter of course.

You should try it, too.

It provides great value, requires minimal albeit dedicated investment of resources, and can generate revenue while you sleep. It fuels social efforts, varies your offerings for consumers, and gives you flexibility.

Digital magazine sales surveyed among 14 of the top magazine publishers are skyrocketing on a single-copy level, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. Year-over-year website traffic is on the rise, as well, SubscriptionInsider.com reports.

The successful user-driven startups of today are the ones who offer subscription-based services. As a magazine or newsletter publisher, you know a subscription-based business takes the revenue of one product and multiplies it over the course of months, or even years.

If you’ve been reading here about the journey from legacy print publishing to digital magazine publishing, it may sound almost too confusing to contemplate
The journey involves everything from creating a magazine edition you may never even have heard of before – the web edition – to pricing to marketing on social media to upgrading print

The subscription model has a lot of perks and one of them is that subscriber churn rate is much lower than any other product you can offer. Customers don’t usually come to your website and buy a single issue, or a book every single month for years on end. Yet they auto-renew regularly.

Psychology suggests there’s a lot more involved to unsubscribe from a product than to simply not show up and buy something new.

Think about doing your laundry at a laundromat. You probably have some kind of regular schedule, but most people don’t follow it exactly all of the time. Maybe you do it every Sunday, or maybe you do it whenever the baskets get full, or maybe you go full months without doing laundry because the laundromat isn’t very fun. You’re in control so you either do it or you don’t, and it take effort and brainspace to make that decision.

If you came to this website for help on how to create a magazine online, congratulations: You couldn’t have picked a better place. That’s just one goal the Mequoda System will help you reach, and it’s just the beginning of new growth for your company.

Imagine a world-class chef going through your leftovers and digging through your pantry to make you a dinner. If you threw together a bunch of ingredients with everything else you have going on, chances are that meal leaves a bit to be desired. When the chef does it, what results is a mouthwatering feast you never thought possible.

We are that chef. The ingredients are nearly limitless – they include everything from your portal to your email newsletter to your social media strategy to video and subscriptions. When we say multiplatform strategy, we mean it.

It’s no secret that Mequoda is the leading strategy-centric content management system provider for magazine and newsletter publishers looking to lock in on a multi-platform system. If it is news to you, then, hey, nice to meet you!

Making sense of the latest magazine industry trends via top digital publishers: Rodale, Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst, IBT
So much news about magazine industry trends during the past month, in large part because of the MPA’s annual gathering in New York City. This news centers on audience development, digital advertising, and monetization strategies that funnel

For digital publishers not fully reliant on ads – which hopefully is you if you’re aiming for high multiplatform performance – few components are as crucial as your subscription revenue model.

At Mequoda, we’ve spent a ton of time studying and writing about digital subscriptions, because we believe they’re a big part of the future of digital magazines.

These four exemplary digital magazine examples demonstrate best practices in design, business models and pricing
With 20% of tablet users reading digital magazines every day, it’s instructive to take a closer look at the variety of digital magazine formats and subscription choices that are available to them five years after the iPad blasted onto the scene.

When

If you came here seeking digital publishing jobs to apply for, don’t be disappointed that you don’t see any listings in this post, because we’ve got something better for you: What digital magazine executives are looking for not only in 2016, but in the years to come.

Subscription publishing is another element of multiplatform strategy that digital magazines must stay attuned to, as the landscape seems to shift every week. Most recently, paywalls for online content have rapidly wavered in favor, as publications like the Sun have scrapped theirs altogether. Freemiums and premiums rule the day, as do membership systems and tiered bundles, all of which can fit into the Mequoda Method and boost conversions.

Staying on top these trends is crucial to success, so what better place to consult than Subscription Insider to get the scoop? Let’s close out the week by taking a look at some of their recent articles.

Dedicating resources to an online magazine archive is a best practice for multiplatform publishers that we highly recommend, and a big key to success in the Mequoda Method.

Our favorite part about digital magazine archives? You don’t actually have to dedicate too many resources to make them work. Aside from some general maintenance, most of the work is on the front end, building onto searchable infrastructure that you’ll already have in place. The content, by definition, is already in place! You don’t have to optimize it, because as a product of your digital subscriptions, it will be behind a wall uncrawlable by Google. At the same time, however, you can recycle content from your online magazine library with updates and improvements, and treat it like an inexhaustible well for promotional purposes.

Adweek recently covered the latest player in the online magazine archive movement, and this one might be the biggest one yet!

So is the underreporting of digital magazines sales the fault of publishers themselves, or should AAM’s audit be modified to accommodate universal pricing and packaging?

We think it’s time to accommodate. Because there are about 277 million adults in the United States with Internet access, and according to our most recent study, 20 percent of them have an average of 1.9 active magazines on their tablet. This sounds more like 105 million active digital magazine buyers and subscribers, which is a lot more than the 11.6 AAM reported for the first half of 2014 (still waiting on those final 2014 numbers.)

Tell us, what’s the best digital magazine, in your humble opinion?
The last time someone you knew won an award, did you agree that they were the best person to win? I bet at some point in your life, someone has won an award that you feel they didn’t deserve. Maybe a coworker won “employee of

The year 2015 has seen a positive net gain so far for digital publishing companies, with sustained good news offsetting any bad. Overall, the industry has become more nimble in adapting to trends, technology, and unexpected developments. A sense of aggressiveness and anticipation has defined the year so far, as publishers have been more proactive.

Mequoda Members know how important it is to stay abreast of digital publishing trends when planning out a multiplatform strategy. Toward that end, we scan the industry headlines every day to find the news that impacts digital publishing companies. Today’s roundup comes from one of our favorite and most dependable sources, Talking New Media.

What’s up with mobile apps and the people who use them? Anyone publishing a digital magazine, or planning to publish one, must keep up with app user statistics. Recent mobile app user statistics bear out earlier predictions: We living in a mobile, mobile world.

Because we constantly survey the app field to keep our clients well-informed, we’d like to share some of the app user statistics of most interest to publishers.

Fast Company is bypassing the Apple Newsstand with its new digital magazine app, powered by Adobe’s latest suite of publishing tools.