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Won’t Subscribe

tbray.org

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#61

Post by comex »

> So, says Mr Manager, “Why on earth would I invest in selling individual articles when a click on the “Subscribe” button gets me a hundred times the revenue?”

> Why they’re wrong: Their arithmetic didn’t consider their chance of getting me to click on “Subscribe.”

Didn’t it? Sure, maybe Tim Bray would have been willing to buy an article for $1 even though he wasn’t willing to subscribe. Maybe a lot of people would have. But if, out of every 100 people who buy the article for $1, a single one of them would have otherwise become a subscriber (if the micropayment option weren’t available), then the paper lost money on net.

To be fair, audience size isn’t constant between the two options. People who read for $1 might forward the article to others; it might end up going viral. But any amount of payment is a huge psychological barrier. I suspect that even in a world with a commonly-used micropayments system, it would be near-impossible for an article to go viral if every person passing it along had to choose to pay $1 first.

And 100 times the revenue is just a staggering factor to overcome.

I think a multi-site fixed-price subscription model would have a much better chance of succeeding, even if it was priced to pay news sites, on average, that same $1 per article – simply because it would remove the psychological barrier. (Other comments have mentioned some subscriptions like this that already exist.) But I won’t get into that further, since it’s not what Tim Bray is proposing.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#62

Post by MattieTK »

wdrw wrote: post #22
boplicity wrote: post #19

As a long-time publisher, there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. I publish for the loyal readers that I have worked hard to cultivate, engage, and enrichen. The primary work is one of building a relationship with a loyal readership, based on consistency and quality. Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who…

But how do you get new loyal readers, if not by repeatedly proving your value to new occasional readers?

Something the New York Times have talked about recently is how they repositioned their subscription offers in the opposite direction to Tim's suggestion recently to great success.

The whole idea is to offer long trials at reduced prices, and I presume push this offer harder and harder to users that keep visiting regularly enough to look like potential subscribers.

Once a user hits subscribe, a bunch of other systems kick in to get that users, over the next 12mos or whatever lengthy period the reduction is for, to build enough habit with the product that by the time the renewal comes around it has become essential.

No other digital media company has had as much success in the last five years as the New York Times.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#64

Post by notatoad »

Waterfall wrote: post #49
notatoad wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's definitely a market, but probably not at the revenue targets that newspapers have. I pay $12/mo for netflix, and $10/mo for spotify. i'd be happy to pay another ~$10/mo for a news service that gave me access to a similarly broad offering of newspaper articles. but the way newspaper web-access subscriptions are priced, to get the same broad bundle of content as what i get from spotify or netflix i'd be paying…

How would you feel about paying for pirated content? If someone just had publication subscriptions they could simply charge a small fee and show all the content on the sites. I could see small groups even do this and every time someone joins the monthly fee goes down.

paying for pirated stuff is a messy minefield, but it's actually a pretty interesting thought - piracy is what spurred the music industry to shift to new models that allowed more consumer-friendly businesses like spotify to exist. i've never even considered pirating a news website before, but it seems like the sort of thing that should be possible.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#66

Post by hobofan »

boplicity wrote: post #60
notimetorelax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were printed newspaper I could go and get one for a few bucks. Digital has nothing to offer of that kind. As the other poster wrote, how else would you expand your readership?

> As the other poster wrote, how else would you expand your readership? By creating a valuable product, finding potential costumers, and offering the product for sale. Why would it be different than any other business? It would be ridiculous to expect every SaaS business to offer their services for "a few bucks", and yet, for some reason, people think it is egregious that publishers don't do this. Bizarre. Though, I…

How do you expect people to go from "not customer" to "loyal customer" without going to through the intermediate step of "occasional reader"?

> By creating a valuable product, finding potential costumers

> Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who are not our loyal readership. That's by design;

> again, NOT our occasional readers

As I read it, you are expecting a occasional visitor to stick with your bad-UX site and stick with it despite that, until they at some point came to the site so often that they have learned to endure the bad UX?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#68

Post by boulos »

Ezra Klein’s interview with Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post (formerly of the Buffalo news) included a lot of discussion on the economics of media and news [1].

Her conclusion is that historically the local newspaper(s) had a monopoly on advertising. That advertising shifted to national ad campaigns on television, national papers (so her transition from Buffalo is highly relevant), and finally online advertising.

In particular though, the “cover everything for our readers” model has broken down pretty massively. The rise of focused journalism and partnerships between papers is apparently giving rise to some innovation here (the basic form is that you get articles from associated press for most things and then supplement with local stories, but the Texas Tribune is mentioned as having a fairly different donation based model plus collaboration with Politico).

So more than anything, I read this as “people will only subscribe and budget for so much media; what will they keep vs drop?”. The default answer has become “only the major international sources”. tbray’s list is incredibly “and also some local” by contrast! But not everyone is going to do that, and the conclusion has been the accelerated decline of local journalism.

The thesis of her book and the discussion is that’s a huge loss, and we likely need different funding models for this public good.

[1] https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-ezra-klein-show/the...

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#69

Post by _pmf_ »

gombosg wrote: post #7

How would you pay for individual articles? Up-front? (If not, that's called donation.) If so, then what happens if you happen not to enjoy the content? Will you (users) feel like playing lottery every time you purchase an article? Feel disappointed for the purchase you just made? Or just quit paying on a certain site, for a certain author etc. after reading too many 'bad' (subjectively) articles? From this standpoint…

> If so, then what happens if you happen not to enjoy the content?

Why not do what all European countries mandates for all other online purchases: allow refunds. If you regularly have users refunding most stuff they buy: stop doing business with them.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#70

Post by gpvos »

_wldu wrote: post #45
boplicity wrote: post #19

As a long-time publisher, there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. I publish for the loyal readers that I have worked hard to cultivate, engage, and enrichen. The primary work is one of building a relationship with a loyal readership, based on consistency and quality. Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who…

This is a good point. It's why I subscribe to some you tube channels but not others. I can find content I am interested in on dozens of channels, but I gravitate to those where I better relate to the channel owner's presentation or personality or problem-solving style.

The huge difference: Youtube subscriptions are free.
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