What We Can Learn When a Weekly Tablet Magazine Calls It Quits

By Minal Bopaiah While we like to highlight subscription publications that are doing it right, it’s also helpful to learn from those that failed.

By Minal BopaiahWhile we like to highlight subscription publications that are doing it right, it’s also helpful to learn from those that failed. That’s why I was so grateful to see Tim Burrows, Content Director of Encore, write extensively about why the weekly tablet app is calling it quits.For those of you pressed for time, here are the highlights:

  • Encore launched two years ago with a plan to sell single editions via its iPad app for $4.49 and year-long subscriptions for $19.99
  • However, while the tablet app got plenty of downloads, only a couple of hundred customers paid for a single edition or subscription.

This is a recurring problem for many paid content apps, since publishers want to make their apps free to download. The app is just the shell that holds your content, and customers must purchase editions within the app. But because iTunes lists the app as “free” in Newsstand and the iTunes store, consumers sometimes feel like they’ve been the victim of a bait-and-switch tactic.Encore then made the fatal mistake of interpreting those free downloads as people willing to consume their content for free, and thereafter decided to make its content available for free. As Burrows writes, “if we sold even one extra ad because of the greater download numbers, it would be worth more than that $800 or so a month we were pulling in [from subscriptions].”I can see how this sort of math makes sense in the short-term, but publications should be VERY WARY of repeating the original sin on the Web by making its content free on mobile and tablet devices. Time and again, digital advertising has proven to be a poor source for sustainable revenues.A more sound business model for tablet content will accept that conversion rates from app download to paid subscription are going to be low — possibly lower than the average 1%-3% conversion rate for free user to paid subscriber subscription sites see. But once a publication has a paying audience, advertising rates and other monetization ideas, can yield higher revenues.

Up Next

Register Now For Email Subscription News Updates!

Search this site

You May Be Interested in: