Thursday 7th October: Subscription fatigue? Subscription amnesia's the problem

October 07, 2021

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter and publishing's quest for subscriber revenues.

Audiences dropping their subscription to your publication because they have too many other subscriptions might not be as big a problem as we thought. New research suggests consumers are forgetting what they have subscribed to.

This might sound like the ideal business model, take money from people that forget they've spent it and, consequently, expect nothing of you. But Mark Sternberg on Medialyte is, rightly, pointing out that companies profiting from their clients’ amnesia rubs him the wrong way.

He wonders where 'passive profit' becomes 'active grift' and suggests cutting zombie subscribers off after a year. He asks if that's too contentious. Maybe? But isn't it better to foster goodwill among the members of the community that are actually willing to pay for journalism than gouge them until they remember to hate you?

This extract from WNIP's new Paywalls for Publishers report focuses on the benefits of personalising paywall offerings and I absolutely love this quote from Innovation Media's John Wilpers:

It’s amazing, (mind-boggling, actually) to think that in an era of increasing personalisation we ever thought a one-size-fits-all paywall would work.

Examiner Media, publishing free weeklies in New York state has rebuilt its staff with a grant from the Substack Local fund. Launching Examiner+ on the newsletter platform it will get $75,000 from Substack in four installments, plus 15% of first-year subscriber revenue before reverting to Substack's standard 90%.

And finally... British human rights lawyer Adam Wagner wasn't impressed when the Daily Mail Online turned his tweet threads into a column without permission. Good news though... some corners of the British media might still be devoid of any journalistic integrity, but the Mail has paid Mr Wagner for his work. They originally offered £100, but stumped up £250 when he suggested what they did was 'probably illegal'.

This week's podcast:

This week we hear from Kaya Yurieff, The Information’s Creator Economy Reporter. We talked about how she covers an industry that is so new and sprawling, some of the challenges of being a creator, and how it fits with The Information’s other coverage.

We've just opened entries for the third year of the Publisher Podcast Awards. The awards are designed to celebrate the podcasting success of publishers and media organisations, whether they’ve been in the podcasting space a while or have just launched their first one. Entry is free, so have a look at our categories and see if you've got anything that could be award-winning!