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Creative Sample: Use Conversion Buttons in Display Ads for Subscription Sales

News, Subscriber Acquisition /

Subscription sites rarely use display advertising to promote their own subscriptions — perhaps because it seems difficult to convey the benefits of a recurring charge to easily distracted prospects. But yet, display advertising can work, especially when combined with behavioral targeting. While perusing industry news sites yesterday, I came across one of the most eye-catching and creative ads I’ve seen for a subscription site: First, the ad barely looked like an ad — it looked more like…

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Hulu Gets Multiple $1 Billion Bids, Current Revenues at $700 Million

Business Strategy, Entertainment and Streaming, FInance, News /

Hulu got three $1 billion bids this past weekend, two from mystery buyers and one from DirectTV, according to Business Insider. Currently, Hulu has 4 million subscribers, and more than $700 million in revenues from both subscription and advertising. But it was valued at $2 billion back in April. Disney and News Corp have been trying to shed themselves of the video-streaming subscription service since 2011, to little avail. However, this time around the parent companies seem…

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Consumer Magazines See 83% Growth in Digital Readership

FInance, News, Subscription Apps /

The GfK MRI’s new Survey of the American Consumer found that overall readership of consumer magazines has grown in the past year. What’s most interesting, however, is the 83% jump in digital readership. Overall, consumer magazines saw just a 3% growth in readership from single-copy and subscription sales, both in print and digital. And digital edition readership (i.e., tablet and replicas, not websites) still remains a fraction of overall readership at 1.4%. Yet, this 1.4% of the…

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Top 5 Mistakes in Paywall Design for Conversion Optimization for Subscription Sites

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Technology /

What’s the first rule of paywall optimization? Don’t let your customers hear you call your paywall a paywall. Instead, allow them to purchase a digital or online subscription. But paywall optimization is more than just linguistics. And there’s a plethora of mistakes being committed out there. Here are the top five: Mistake#1: Not having a specific paywall Subscribers like “all-access,” but prospects usually “Buy Now” because they want one particular item. When you create a specific paywall…

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Newsweek Botches Digital Transition, May Be Looking for a Buyer

Business Strategy, FInance, News, Subscription Apps /

Back in January, Newsweek decided to abandon its print magazine for digital tablet editions. The digital edition launch was heralded with much fanfare in true Tina-Brown style (Newsweek’s current Editor-in-Chief after the merger with The Daily Beast), including an animated cover. But less than six months later, it seems that my predictions about poor financial sustainability are coming true, and parent company IAC is rumored to be looking for a buyer. IAC Chariman Barry Diller famously…

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Why Subscription Sites Should Avoid ‘Login with Amazon’ Service

News, Payment Processing, Technology /

Social sign-ons have been shown to reduce friction when getting visitors to register for a subscription or membership site. And the benefit is that social platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, don’t cut into your profits by offering such a service. But there’s a disruption brewing. Amazon just announced plans to make it’s “Login with Amazon” feature available to all sites. The technology is already being employed by Zappos and Woot (both of which are already…

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Pandora Doubles Subscription Revenue to $20.4 Million

Auto-renew Subscription, Consumer Services, Entertainment and Streaming, FInance, Freemium, News, Revenue and Sales, Subscription Apps /

Pandora’s number of premium subscribers grew to 2.5 million after the company acquired 700,000 new subscribers in Q1 of 2013, according to a recent press release, giving Pandora the largest US subscriber base of any online music subscription service. The subscription numbers  also allowed the company to garner $20.4 million in subscription revenues in the first quarter alone, a 100% increase over the $10.2 million made in subscription revenue in Q1 of 2012. CEO Joe Kennedy attributed…

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Tablet Metrics Are Coming, Along with More Touchscreen Laptops

News, Subscription Apps, Technology /

The MPA (formerly the Magazine Publishers’ Association and now the Association of Magazine Media — but still using the acronym MPA), finally released a plan to standardize tablet metrics and measurement. The MPA had previously released a set of voluntary guidelines, which were meant to aid ad sales into digital editions, but  would also help with subscription retention. The MPA’s announcement at their conference in New Orleans this week focused on making those voluntary guidelines mandatory. The…

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Case Study Lessons: When Launching New Subscription Products, Create Single Sign-On for Existing Subscribers

Business Media and Publishing, Industry Announcements, News, Technology /

As we discovered in our survey of subscription site executives for the 2013 Online Subscription Benchmark Report, 87% of subscription sites plan on launching new subscription and paid products this year. One new product that we particularly like is the Toronto Star’s eBook subscription service for long-form news content called Star Dispatches. Subscribers to Star Dispatches get one long-form news story — of varying genres, from lifestyle to investigative pieces — delivered each week to their…

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Webinar Metrics to Help Subscription Sites Increase Engagement and Sales

News, Subscriber Acquisition /

Whether you’re using Webinars to sell your services or as stand-alone editorial content, you’ll be interested in the new metrics on Webinar engagement and marketing, compiled by Webinar platform provider On24. On24 examined the data from the 2300+ Webinars conducted by its customers in 2012 and found a number of interesting metrics: Email to your own in-house list remains the most effective way to get people to register to attend Webinars. Two emails — one promoting the topic…

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