Boston Globe Paywall Strategy: Run Two Sites, One Subscription-Only
This week The Boston Globe launched BostonGlobe.com as an addition to its current site Boston.com. This is all part of the newspaper's new online paywall strategy: BostonGlobe.com will start charging $3.99 per week in October for a digital susbcription (free for print newspaper subscribers) and feature content that runs in the newspaper and other hard journalism. Boston.com will remain free, supported by advertising, and feature event listings and e-commerce. "What we noticed was that there were…
Amazon to Launch Subscription E-book Service
Amazon is looking to become the Netflix of e-books by launching a subscription service to e-books for an annual fee, reports The Wall Street Journal. There are already sites -- such as 24Symbols.com and BookSwim.com -- working on a similar model but Amazon has the position and power to negotiate with publishers on a far larger scale and put in place a compelling service." Amazon has told publishers it is considering creating a digital-book library featuring…
Consider Adding Ratings and Reviews to Your Subscription Site
Infocommerce data points has released a fascinating white paper on consumer ratings and reviews. While whole Internet businesses - like TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com - have been built on the review Model, the paper reminds us that ratings and reviews have now become an essential part of any ecommerce site and can certainly have a place on almost any subscription.Here are some key findings from "The Strategic Use of Consumer Ratings and Reviews": Reviews provide deep, high…
Publishing in the Face of the Internet’s Short Attention Span
Bit.ly has just published some fascinating research: click rates drop by half after about three hours for links posted on Twitter, Facebook and regular Web pages (direct). With such a potentially short life for your content, what does this mean for online publishers and subscription sites? It may mean rethinking the size of the content you present and the frequency. At our sister site WhichTestWon.com, we see that readers tend to come in on the day we…
Case Study Lesson: Clever Email Campaign Your Subscription Site Can Adopt
Our latest Subscription Site Insider Case Study reveals how EBMedicine uses a clever email series to engage current and potential subscribers who are emergency medicine physicians and practitioners. But any subscription site can adopt this great marketing idea. Once a month, the ""What's Your Diagnosis?" challenge email email is sent with a patient presentation of symptoms but will stop short of a diagnosis, instead asking the audience of medical professionals to post their guess at the…
Publisher Settles Copyright Infringement Claims as Part of Aggressive Anti-Piracy Campaign
I'm told that next week the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, will announce that it has settled copyright infringement claims it pursued against Harbison-Mahony-Higgins Builders, Inc. (HMH Builders) for purchasing one single subscription to a publication but distributing it to hundreds of employees. This is big news for subscription sites who are intent on protecting their copyright and preventing piracy. It is also a…
Financial Times Pulls App from iTunes Store
By now you have probably heard that The Financial Times app is no longer for sale in the iTunes app store. The publisher pulled the app because of Apple's new requirement that all in-app subscriptions go through the iTunes store. FT has launched a web-based app and hopes to push customers to that option but there isn't any data on how many people are using it, while 10% of digital subs were coming from the iPad.…
Mashable’s 8 Tips for Launching a Top-ranked Paid Mobile App
So you're ready to launch a mobile app? Are there things you can do as you launch to make it a top-ranked moment? Mashable has eight best practices and here are few to share: The first two weeks of your app's life are the most critical, according to Mashable's analysis. Get your marketing and cross-promotion plan in place well before the launch of the app. We've seen a number of paid apps, particularly in the travel…
DoubleRecall Offers Twist on Paywalls
Though here at Subscription Site Central, we mostly concentrate on using paywalls to convert free users to paid content subscribers, there are other options for paywalls -- advertising and brand recognition. Gigaom* this week reported on new service DoubleRecall which inserts paywalls in apps and websites and allows access to protected content to users who reads messages from sponsors and type in a few highlighted words to gain access.This isn't a totally new idea as there…
Surprise: Three Local News Sites Increase Pageviews With Paywalls
"I can't say anything bad about the paywall. I think it's been the best thing, or one of the best things, we've ever done," says John Winn Miller, publisher at The Concord Monitor. He's one of three local news publishers/editors that Ellie Behling of emediavitals profiled in this story about local news sites where pageviews actually increased after paywalls were erected. Interestingly, Behling notes that three success stories she profiles all use metered paywalls (similar…
