The paid subscription model for online publications is showing positive results

I remember a year and a half or two ago, when Rupert Murdoch proclaimed the era of paid subscription to still free content, the online community gave an extremely negative response to such an initiative. Most users (especially domestic ones) taunted this way of making money, believing that the Murdoch empire would collapse as soon as the transition to paid content took place. However, this did not happen - the same The Wall Street Journal now has about 400 thousand subscribers, being one of the most successful online publications with a paid subscription. In May of this year, publications such as The Times and Sunday Times began to work on a paid basis. Once again, the online community predicted a quick death for the "greedy media." But now, several months have already passed, and these publications presented statistics on subscribers.

As it turned out, hundreds of thousands of users agree with the idea of ​​receiving electronic content on their media, and pay for the information without much regret. So, for the right to receive an electronic version of the newspaper on their "readers", 105 thousand users paid. In addition, subscribers to the paper version of the publication became interested in such an idea - this is another hundred thousand people. It turns out that now for the right to read your favorite publications online pays 205 thousand people. Of course, this is several times less (ten times) than the previous number of subscribers, but nevertheless, such a number of customers allows newspapers to work normally without fear of bankruptcy.

Previously, these media outlets received profits from their own websites as accruals for advertisements, which, as you know, is not a particularly stable way to make a profit. Today there is advertising - and tomorrow it is not, it was very well manifested during the crisis.

Now, according to the management of these media, approximately half of the subscribers pay for monthly access to the content, and another half pays for one-time access to the online version of their favorite publication. Recently, there has been a positive trend in the increase in the number of subscribers, which is also a good indicator of the viability of this method of making a profit. By the way, the same The Times for the first time in two centuries of its existence began to spread differently than just a paper newspaper. This is an indicator of the modern attitude of readers to the type of medium - many are switching to electronic content, which is associated with the convenience of obtaining information in this form.

Subscribing to The Times and The Sunday Times is currently 1 pound per day. This is not so much, especially since there are no restrictions on the number of visits. You can visit the site, you can read the electronic version of The Sunday Times.

The management of News International, which owns the aforementioned publications, reports that the Sun and News of the World editions will soon switch to a new type of subscription.

Via guardian