Source: Preemium
Remember actress Lindsay Lohan of The Parent Trap remake and Mean Girls fame? She’s back, and you can get exclusive access to LiLo’s personal diaries, video updates, photos, news, fashion and beauty tutorials, behind-the-scenes footage and more for $2.99 a month on her new Preemium lifestyle website.
So far there isn’t a lot of content. As of Wednesday afternoon, the 30-year-old actress had published nine posts to the site, including an iPhone video, selfies and other photos, says the Hollywood Reporter. Lohan announced the new lifestyle site on Twitter Tuesday (see below, right).
Source: Twitter
For now, Lohan is the only celebrity featured on Preemium, but the website invites others to apply to become publishers on the site, so it appears she intends to post content behind the paywall. Once approved publishers, can post content to their profile in Lifestyle, Sports, Music and Fitness categories. The publishers can sign up their own subscribers and select their own price point, so Preemium becomes more than a lifestyle website. It becomes a publishing platform. It looks like the primary URL will be http://preemium.com with the profile name after. In Lohan’s case, the URL is http://preemium.com/a/lindsaylohan.
“Preemium offers you the opportunity to share all your exclusive content behind a paywall. We create your profile for free within 24 hours, and it will be available on desktop, mobile and as an iPhone app. You get subscribers by telling them about your profile on social media sites, e.g., Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. We recommend that you post teasers about your exclusive and personal content only available on Preemium,” the site says.
Source: Preemium
Preemium features a hard paywall. Readers can’t access any of the content, details about the site, price or what a subscription includes without first signing in with a Facebook account or email address. Once there, readers will get this sign-up screen.
Source: Preemium
The only information offered is the price – $2.99 a month in U.S. dollars – and that the subscription is on auto-renewal. To learn more about billing, readers must click on the tiny print to get Billing Details. Here prospective subscribers learn that they can pay with a credit card or an In-App purchase from Apple. There doesn’t not appear to be an Android option. While the Billing Details mention a free trial period, the subscription does not appear to have a free trial.
Once logged into the Dashboard, users can see what they’ve subscribed to. Initially, this will be Lohan’s site, but it looks like this is where a subscriber will be able to access other celebrity profiles once they’re made available.
People magazine reports that, in Lohan’s first post on Preemium, Lohan says “I am in a period of renewal and that’s why I deleted all my posts from Instagram.”
Celebrity news might not be on top of everyone’s list of important news of the day, but at least 13 percent of respondents to a January-February 2015 survey by YouGov say that entertainment and celebrity news is important to them, so Lohan may have a built-in audience with her own fan base.
Source: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
Insider Take:
We’re all about innovation and using the subscription model to try new things, and this venture by Lohan is no different. It is a way for her to capitalize on her celebrity status to earn some recurring revenue. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily “news” or even a good example of innovation. However, what we really like about this subscription – regardless of how we feel about LiLo – is that this lifestyle website isn’t just about Lohan. It is a publishing portal, or hub, that can be used by others, so if it is done right, it can create opportunities for other celebrities, artists and sports personalities to offer their own exclusive content.
Because Lohan already has a sizable fan base, the key to Preemium’s success will be in the execution. Granted the site is new, but we’d prefer to see more transparency, including a clear outline of what a subscriber can expect to receive, such as a sample of that content through a free trial or even a metered paywall where fans can see one or two pieces of content before deciding they want to subscribe. Another best practice to consider would be a list of FAQs and maybe a few testimonials from subscribers. Very little is explained before a user must register, and even then, the information is limited. With some fine-tuning, Preemium has the potential to be a popular and profitable lifestyle portal for Lohan and other publishers.