I alluded a few days ago to the fact that The Guardian is not the bastion of free content it claims to be, garnering subscription revenues from many of its mobile and tablet apps.

Well, here are some numbers to back that claim.

While the company posted a £44.2 million loss recently, buried in that financial report was the fact that 17,000 people pay for the Guardian’s £9.99 a month iPad app, while an unspecified number pay for the Kindle equivalent.

That means that, after Apple takes its cut, The Guardian is generating £1.4 million in revenue from its iPad app alone.

Of course, this is not nearly enough for a company with more than 650 salaried journalists, even with the Kindle revenue. Thus, the company has reopened its “voluntary program” to eliminate “journalist redundancies,” which I think is a polite British way of saying The Guardian is laying off 70-100 journalists in the coming months and looking for volunteers.

But the lesson other newspapers should take away is that readers will pay for content in convenient formats — subscription revenues are possible for almost all of you. But you’ll have to do more with less and make sure you’re publishing on the right platform for your demographic. That may mean having a less robust Web presence. After all, if your website isn’t making you money, stop sinking costs into it. Focus on the platforms that do, like tablet-formatted content and fun mobile apps.