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Paywalls Archive
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Think of a number and double/halve it: the science behind online subs pricing
Comment by Tim Dawson Deciding whether it makes business sense putting online publications behind paywalls is increasingly like finding scientific evidence for the existence of God. Your conclusion appears to be determined more by pre-existing prejudice than from any meaning actually extracted from data. In the past week, Wolverhampton’s Express and Star has abandoned the [...] -
Moving to a new beat – online music tutorials flourish after band bookings bomb
Case study by Tim Dawson Two-and-a-half years after fully focusing on producing online bass-guitar tutorials, Paul Wolfe is earning around £70,000 a year from his business. Approximately 500 subscribers pay $127 annual subscription for his weekly magazine and instructive video, other eBook products sell hundreds of copies at prices generally between $100 and $200. Indeed, so confident [...] -
Tablets provide media with sweet relief
Analysis by Tim Dawson. News International’s announcement last week that digital sales of its Times/Sunday Times products had grown by 3% over the past three months dispel for the moment suggestions that Murdoch’s paywall strategy is bust. With 111,000 subscribers, and growing, it is quite possible that News International’s online customers will over take the [...] -
Digital subscriptions – no investment, no sales
Comment by Tim Dawson. The publication of the first audited circulation figures for digital magazine sales did little to make the case that online subscriptions are the future. Only two magazines have sold more than 1,000 subscriptions – Men’s Health and Hello! And neither of them had sold enough to give much cheer to those [...] -
Niche both a help and hindrance to online start-up Bookbrunch
Case study by Alex Klaushofer. When Nicholas Clee and Liz Thomson were casting about for a new job, with full-time staff jobs behind them and freelance opportunities on the wane, a digital solution seemed obvious. Between them, they had over fifty years experience in writing about publishing and the book trade: Clee was a former [...] -
Like a phoenix from liquidation – mag experiments with partnership model
Case study by Alex Klaushofer. When the numbers fail to add up, the publishers of most small magazines take the simple, expeditious step of simply folding the thing. But when weekly regeneration magazine New Start was deemed no longer viable, it embarked on a new direction which could point the way for other, similar publications. [...] -
Taking the news out of the papers – can the UK’s media empires survive?
Analysis by Tim Dawson. Might British newspaper be beacons of innovation and experiment in a news market convulsed with technologically-led change? Or are they venerable, but doomed dinosaurs whose death agonies are causing them to perform extraordinary convulsions it a final, futile attempt to adapt to a new environment? One could happily reach either conclusion [...] -
Is digital revenue now the dominent source of income for publishers?
Analysis by Tim Dawson. Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future Publishing, says we have reached a ‘tipping point’ where digital magazine operations become more important than their paper forbears. Clearly, she was trying to put a positive gloss on the publishers’ annual figures – Future’s profits are down from £3m last year to £1.8m this [...] -
Sail racing ‘app mag’ enters unchartered waters
Sail racing is possibly the first ‘back bedroom’ iPad magazine to launch – and to judge by the initial response, it looks set to blaze a trail. Established and self-financed by Justin Chisholm for ‘around £10,000’, its target was to reach 10,000 views and downloads by the first week in February. It passed that milestone [...]