Newspapers Doing Well With Membership Clubs Instead Of Paywalls
from the join-the-club dept
One of our biggest complaints with news publications that insist "a paywall is the answer" is the fact that they never seem to actually add any more value to their publication that makes it worth paying. They're so focused on getting people to "pay for content," they miss the fact that there's plenty of competing content, and the real focus should be on providing value that builds a community. Thankfully, not all newspapers are making that mistake. Bill Mitchell, at Poynter, has a post about a new study looking at newspaper business models that both highlights that straight paywalls need to be about more than just paying for content, but also which highlights the success some publications are having with membership clubs, which specifically provide additional value behind the content for those who are willing to subscribe:Take, for example, the street-level bookshop at Politiken, the leading newspaper in Denmark. I stopped in there one drizzly Saturday morning last Fall after teaching in Poynter's Scandinavian Summer School. I picked up a couple of travel guides and an English language version of a popular Danish novel. But I paid my bill and left the shop oblivious to the range of products and services available to Politiken subscribers via its Politiken Plus loyalty program.This actually fits in well with some of the suggestions that people came up with back at the Techdirt Saves* Journalism event last month, highlighting how publications can focus on building up services for the community which keep them loyal to the publication and the community itself.
"We can say 70 percent of (our subscribers) use Politiken Plus during the year," the paper's sales and marketing director, Poul Skott, told the authors of the WAN report. "The more products we have the better ... the harder it is to say good-bye to the newspaper. It's going to hurt a bit, because you can only get a Plus card as a newspaper subscriber."
This Google translate page will give you a sense of what the program offers, including special offers on travel, restaurants and theater, and how the activities and deals of Politiken Plus are integrated into the newspaper.
It sounds like the early results from such programs suggest they work well (or, at the very least, better than comparable newspapers that don't use them). Still, reading through the analysis, it still feels like most publications are looking at these programs as ways to "retain subscribers," not as a central reason to buy. That is, they're still focused on "selling the newspaper" with this is a bonus add-on, rather than trying to sell this bundle, which is made more valuable by getting the news as well.
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Filed Under: membership clubs, newspapers, paywalls
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Figures it can't be in English. Far be it for Americas to innovate.
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Instead, they're too busy trying to litigate.
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Focus on Subscriber retention
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Re: Focus on Subscriber retention
To me it is pretty straightforward, yet we've seen so often how the "paywall" is nothing more than slapping a price on something that was free the day before (and worse: building that wall around it so sharing and growing new readers can't happen).
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Don't confuse price and value. The air you breath is free but it has value.
"certainly not enough for anyone to part with their money."
If something can be offered for free it should. Why should people have to pay for something that can be offered for free? That makes no sense. There is no good reason to artificially make people's lives more difficult just because some selfish jerk wants to make money.
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Re: Re:
price and value are not the same, but they have an elastic relationship in the way people look at things. something given for free has no price, and given all the time, also loses value as an individual item because it can always be replaced.
value for anything functional never truly reaches zero (unless replaced by something better), but value in part is expressed in how much care you would take to preserve it. if you can get another whatever almost anywhere, the value for the one you have is very low, it is replaceable and unimportant.
the "are is free but has value" argument is always the dumbest of arguments, because you are trying to confuse a life requirement with purchases made of optional things or services. blood is free too, right? bones seem to be cheap too. a moronic argument. i dont value air, i require it. i dont require tickets to play mini putt with some drummer. those i would purchase if i valued them enough.
"If something can be offered for free it should. " - in a socialist economy, perhaps. something offered for free (including with no advertising or no other income sources attached) is nice, but it is also self-defeating. anything that takes time to create (even the original such as a song) must have a way to recoup the costs of the time or fewer people will be interested in creation of the product to start with. some still will, but fewer will. time will be spent elsewhere so they can afford to eat. it is the nature of the game.
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You need to find something more productive to do with your spare time than trolling on nearly every Techdirt post. Ever heard of video games? Or what about that book you were buying even though all the articles were available by other means...
http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100616/1038269856#c378
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Win 7 = $395 (after tax)
Open Office = $free
MS Office = $789 (after tax)
I value PCLinuxOS and OO.o very much.
By comparison, MS isn't even close. If I was given 7 and MS Office, I would give them away as well as the hassle of maintaining and keeping secure is not worth it to me.
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I believe it!
There are some amazing academic articles available on the topic (that also include studies of "subcultures of comsumption") by Muniz & O'Guinn and Schouten & McAlexander. The latter two have done some fabulous work on Harley-Davidson and Jeep :-) Look them up! They are great reading.
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