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#paywalls12 – The Economist: ‘We have doubled content in two years’

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“Just putting print online was never going to be enough” said Audra Martin, vice president of customer engagement at the Economist, at today’s Paywall Strategies conference.

And digital is driving production. “We had to up the amount and frequency we were publishing.

“We have doubled the content we have produced over last two years,” she said, with “blogs accounting for half of content”.

Martin explained how the Economist, which charges readers to use its apps and the majority of the content on its website, is growing its communities, not just paying subscribers.

One way is by focusing on social media optimisation. “We’ve got smart of how and when post things,” she said, with consideration given to different global audiences. “And it amplifies.”

And once people see the kind of content available, they will pay to access they will pay for it. “If they taste it, they will want more,” she said.

Despite recent digital successes and developments – with digital-only subscriptions topping 100,000 at the end of last year, 300,000 out of the Economist’s one million print subscribers using the Economist’s apps, and 70 per cent of subscribers expecting expect to be reading the publication digitally in two years – the magazine remains committed to print.

“We will continue to print the newspaper as long as people want to consume it,” she said.

“But we want to be ahead of of the game when people move from print to digital.”

#paywalls12 – Looking outside: five paid-content lessons from Denmark, Slovakia and Slovenia

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Copyright: Dreamer, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the sessions of today’s Paywall Strategies conference focussed on lessons from other countries, hearing from Berlingske Media, Denmark’s largest private media company, and from Piano Media, which has set up national subscription models in Slovakia and Slovenia.

Mads-Jakob Vad Kristensen, director of digital development at Berlingske Media, which has 2,000 employees and generates €400 million-a-year in revenue, explained how a range of titles, including tabloid, business-to-business and business-to-consumer publications are charging for content.

Not comfortable with the term paywall, Vad Kristensen shared the publisher’s lessons.

He gave the example of how Berlingske Media title BT Plus started by removing content “nice and slowly”, beginning to charge readers in April 2011.

Perhaps due to the season, a surprise first success in encouraging people to pay was an article on ’17 ways to spring clean your house’.

1. People will pay 

“If you have the right content people will pay for it, even in the consumer space,” he said.

However, he admitted the publisher “has not yet cracked” what makes young people part with their cash.

2. Travel guides are a hit

Another lesson from the Danish publisher is that “travel guides are a hit”, with people prepared to pay for digital city guides.

Many go on to pay for a €4-a-month subscription as that is the same price as an individual guide. And then they forget to cancel their subscriptions.

3. Micropayments do not work

People will not pay for individual articles, was another lesson from the Danish publisher – even for an article advising people on “how to become a super lover” did not generate a single Kroner.

Mobile is going towards a paid model and digital is growing, Vad Kristensen said, revealing that “within a month we should have a new B2B offering, priced at around €40-a-month, purely digital product.”

4. Look at new forms of content

Vad Kristensen also urged publishers, especially of B2B and B2C titles, to consider the payment opportunities with new forms of content.

“It’s stupid to only look at content that has existed for 200 years.”

Tomas Bella – the CEO of Piano Media, the company behind group paywalls in Slovakia, which launched in April last year, and Slovenia, which went up last month – shared his lessons.

5. Group models work

A joint model where several publishers team up to charge readers works, said Bella, giving examples of successes and feedback from publishers in Slovakia and Slovenia.

The individual titles decide how much content to put in the paid-for section of the site, which ranges from 0 to 60 per cent.

The site to have joined but has not put any content behind the wall is a TV station with an ad-free site. It took the stance that it is not losing anything – and some confused customers even sign up and pay.

“Some titles even charging for commenting”, Bella said, resulting in “the quality of the discussions actually go going up”.

“It is not ideal” but you do “scare away” problem commenters, Bella said.

Bella explained how 40 per cent of the revenue generated goes to the site which saw the reader join and pay, the rest of the money is divided between the sites where the reader spends his or her time.

And Piano Media has big plans: it expects three to four countries to adopt the group model in 2012 and has an overall target of 50 countries, requiring four or five publishers to participate.

The UK is “not likely to be the first English-speaking country” to adopt the model, but sees strong possibilities for a joint paywall around areas of content, such as sport.

#paywalls12 – Niche content paywalls: three success stories

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The journey from print to digital is “a bit like making trains that float, in case they need to go back on the canal,” Steve Hewlett, Guardian columnist and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Media Show.

His analogy came at the opening of today’s Paywall Strategies event, which Hewlett is chairing.

Three niche publishers spoke on the panel, along with Tom Whitwell from the Times.

For B2B publisher Lloyd’s List Group, publisher of the 277-year-old daily print newspaper Lloyds List ,which specialises in shipping and commodities news, “Print comes third behind mobile and web,” Adam Smallman said.

“We have sought to provide bloody fantastic content. That’s our paywall strategy,” he added.

Lloyd’s model is a high-price subscription which companies pay, providing access for their employees.

Out of the 7,000 subscribers, 4,000 receive the daily print copy.

A huge focus for the Lloyds List Group is the merging of data and journalism. Smallman illustrated how data led to a story which saw him interviewed on each major US network after last month’s sinking of cruise ship the Costa Concordia.

Data collection meant Lloyds was able to report that the ship had previously come even closer to the island off which it sank, coming within 230 metres of land last year.

Another niche publisher on the panel was Incisive Media, which owns a range of specialist titles.

Jon Bentley, head of online commercial development, said 65 per cent of people who come to Incisive sites never come back. “Therefore focus on your fans who do return,” he recommended.

And those who do not return look at just 2.6 pages per visit, compared with 7.11 pages viewed at by “customers”.

Their aim is therefore to convert readers from “fly-by to fan”, Bentley said, explaining it can be tough with just 5 per cent taking up a trial.

Rob Aherne, of Haymarket Media Group, talked about a different type of niche content: motorsport titles.

The sites – Autosport, Motorsport News and Castrol EDGE World Driver Rankings – have 1.1 million users viewing 20 million pages a month.

“Our paywall has saved us as a business,” he proclaimed.

After trialling a free model and a hard paywall, they have settled on a “freemium” option, with some free content and readers asked to ay £5.50-a-moth for additional content. Those who buy the magazine get a digital subscription included.

So what will people pay for? “Words and pictures – and it is all ad free,” he explained.

Just 1 per cent of readers pay to access content, but those account for 11 per cent of site traffic. “They are loyal, they are engaged,” Aherne added.

The motorsport titles break news outside the wall, but provide content for deeper engagement behind the wall.

Readers subscribe because “they want to know more than the bloke next to them in the pub,” Aherne said.