August 29, 2008
The Biggest Myth About Online Publishing
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
No, I don’t mean those myths you can debunk on snopes.com. I mean one of the most common myths that I hear, often from otherwise very smart people.
It’s this: “People aren’t willing to pay for content on the Internet.” I have no idea why this myth is still propagated when it’s so obviously untrue.
Just a few examples:
- CooksIllustrated.com has over 150,000 online subscribers at around 20 bucks a year — that’s $3 million for essentially recycled, “repurposed” magazine content.
- Consumer Reports has over 3 million online-only subscribers paying either annually or monthly.
- MarketingSherpa sells access to thousands of reports, surveys, case studies and samples for a little under $400 a year. Couldn’t find a number of subscribers but they’ve been going strong for years (with events, publications, workshops, even a certification program, they are similar to a lot of associations except slightly more useful than some).
- Speaking of MarketingSherpa, yesterday they reported that consumer review site Angieslist.com has 330,000 paid members (the site lists fees ranging from around $9/mo or $82/year plus signup fees).
- Lynda.com offers online training on a huge number of subjects, mostly related to software and technology, for fees ranging from $25/mo basic memberships to $375/year premium memberships. They claim “tens of thousands of subscribers” and have been around for 13 years.
What we’ve learned in online media during the last several years is that big “general interest” websites of any kind — those aimed at huge consumer audiences, like newspapers, networks, etc. — are not able (or at least have not been able) to charge successfully for content. But more targeted, niche websites can be very successful in charging for different types of content aimed at a specialized audience — and even small subscriber bases can be very profitable.
The good thing is that associations are the definition of niche. Are you taking advantage of that fact?
I would like to hear what other assocations are doing on this topic. We have been talking about it for a couple of years now. Finally we will have a web site that will support the function in a few weeks. But will we actually charge for our content? I don’t know. I am all for it. My association should look at our information as a commodity, and some of it can make money.
Hi Sarah,
I totally understand that you want to use your content and expertise to generate revenue. I also believe that there is a market for paid online content. There is a lot to consider when selling your online content:
1. Who are you selling it to? Members? Non-members (general public and people in your industry that just aren’t members)? Members at a discount? Non-members at “full price? Members for free?
2. Do members get to see the content before non-members?
3. Do members get free acess to all of the content and non-members only get tastes until they pay?
4. How will putting content online impact the usefulness/wantedness of your print publication? If your print publication becomes less read and that means losing advertisers how does that impact the association?
5. Are you going to sell articles? Reports? An online version of your print pub/journal? All of these?
6. Are you going to have institutional pricing? Can institutions buy packages of reports? Site licenses? How are you going to price those and monitor use?
7. If you start selling more content online and make it easier for your customers to get information without being a member will that make it more likely that member numbers decrease?
8. Do you have the staff resources to get everything you want to sell up online?
9. Is your back-end truly set up to allow you to put up and sell content relatively easily?
I am sure I could come up with other questions for you to think about when developing your strategy for selling content. Personally I think you need to give some serious thought to the needs of your market (members, non-members, the general public, etc) and use that as a guide to what you should focus on first.
Scott