Magazine & eMedia Publishing Professional & Social Network
Digital Magazines - paid model
I would love to hear from anyone that has launched a digital magazine for a paid publication.
I see this as being pretty straight forward. Promote the digital magazine as paid, perhaps discounted, promote the benefit of receiving the issue before anyone else, stop killing trees, searchable, etc. Maybe offer the digital magazine at 50% discount from the domestic print rate. Internationally maybe offer the digital magazine at the print domestic rate, the faster delivering will be a very attractive benefit for the intl market.
I've just heard of a model that I don't completely understand and agree with and that is offering the digital magazine free to everyone (domestic and intl)...period. There was even discussion of offering the digital magazine option on a paid sub insert card, the thinking being that "no one will take advantage of it".
I can understand identifying a controlled-circ group and offering them digital only for free but I don't understand the objective behind devaluing our paid content by offering a digital magazine free. You aren't charging the sub price to just cover your print/mail costs - there is at least the perception you are paying for the content.
I would love to hear theories, case studies, etc. Thanks!
I see this as being pretty straight forward. Promote the digital magazine as paid, perhaps discounted, promote the benefit of receiving the issue before anyone else, stop killing trees, searchable, etc. Maybe offer the digital magazine at 50% discount from the domestic print rate. Internationally maybe offer the digital magazine at the print domestic rate, the faster delivering will be a very attractive benefit for the intl market.
I've just heard of a model that I don't completely understand and agree with and that is offering the digital magazine free to everyone (domestic and intl)...period. There was even discussion of offering the digital magazine option on a paid sub insert card, the thinking being that "no one will take advantage of it".
I can understand identifying a controlled-circ group and offering them digital only for free but I don't understand the objective behind devaluing our paid content by offering a digital magazine free. You aren't charging the sub price to just cover your print/mail costs - there is at least the perception you are paying for the content.
I would love to hear theories, case studies, etc. Thanks!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on -
Paste Magazine (www.pastemagazine.com) created an entirely different subscription model which they've dubbed as Paste Digital VIP (www.pastemagazine.com/vip/). They're offering a digital subscription at a monthly price (slightly less than the newsstand) but have included a whole slew of other incentives such as downloadable content, CDs, a t-shirt, etc. I'm not sure how it's performing against their other subscription models but it's by far the most intriguing paid digital edition subscription model I've seen yet.
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Permalink Reply by Don Brown on -
In theory the paid subs model for digital magazines should work - but it doesn't in practise because most readers don't like digitial editions. Yes, I know that Zinio have got hundreds of thousands of customers, but that's a drop in the ocean compared to the number of print subscribers. Over here in the UK a company that was aiming to emulate the Zinio model has just had the plug pulled on it, and the other ones are fairly small operators.
The truth is that consumers don't like digital editions in sufficient numbers because they don't gain any real benefit from having an electronic version of a print magazine; if you're going to do it you need to use the additional options that a digital product can provide - video, interactivity, community, sound - rather than just an 'enhanced pdf'. Dennis publishing have launched a few such products - Monkey Mag, iGizmo and iMotor - but these are based on a free distribution, ad-funded model.
Don Brown, www.magazine-group.co.uk
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