By Minal Bopaiah
The online subscription industry is booming, especially for the giants in the industry.
Our 2013 Online Subscription Benchmark Report estimated that the industry generates more than $18 billion in revenue a year, but today, I wanted to take a look at some of the 10 most noteworthy sites. (Members of Subscription Site Insider can download a table of subscription revenue estimates for more than 50 subscription content sites.)
The following list summarizes estimated subscription revenues for each site/company. It does take other revenue streams (advertising, etc.) into account.
- American Greetings – $60 Million
- Amazon Prime – $1.58 Billion
- Ancestry.com – $540 Million
- Angie’s List – $65 Million
- Classmates.com – $160 Million
- Consumer Reports.org – $144 Million
- Hulu Plus – $480 Million
- MLB.com – $600 Million
- Netflix – $4.37 Billion
- World of Warcraft – $1 Billion
What’s telling is that news sites, even business-minded ones like The Financial Times of The Economist , are not the biggest subscription revenue generators. Instead, streaming video on-demand (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, MLB.com) seems to be the most lucrative industry, followed by sites that are based on user-generated information or interaction, like Angie’s List and Classmates.com.
Also noteworthy is the fact that the nonprofit publication Consumer Reports is generating $144 million from subscription sales, which is above and beyond the $37 million generated by The New York Times. However, NYT has advertising and other revenue streams which augment its total revenues way beyond the small nonprofit.
For a list of estimated subscription revenues on more than 50 subscription sites, including The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Economist, join Subscription Site Insider today.
