Author: Kathy McCabe - Page 3 - Subscription Insider

Subscription Numbers for Hulu, Spotify, The New York Times

Big subscription numbers news for paywall sites today. Hulu Plus which offers on-demand television programming on mobile devices has now topped one million subscribers – who pay $7.99 per week for the service. CEO Jason Kilar was right on target back in July when he predicted Hulu Plus would make this milestone. Hulu is for sale and these subscriber numbers can only increase interest. Subscription music service Spotify now has two million paid subscribers globally, about 400,000…

Subscription Numbers for Hulu, Spotify, The New York Times Read More »

Case Study Lesson: How to Get Effective Affiliates

Showcase / Kathy McCabe

Our latest Subscription Site Insider Case Study profiles Teen Life Ministries – a site that has 3,000 paid subscribers. Co-founder Paul Evans learned the hard way that you can’t always turn subscribers into affiliates. Fortunately there’s a take-away lesson from his approach. Teen Life Ministries has a small affiliate program and like most sites, only a few affiliates bring in any real money. Evans gives a generous payment of 33% for the lifetime of the subscription.…

Case Study Lesson: How to Get Effective Affiliates Read More »

Are Comments Too Much Work? One Newspaper Group Thinks So

Subscriber Only / Kathy McCabe

Are comments a necessary part of audience engagement or just too much work to moderate? Swift newspapers dropped comments in the spring and has announced that they won’t be coming back any time soon. Randy Bagert, editor of Swift’s Greeley (CO) Tribune announced the comment ‘pause’ last April by saying, “Why don’t we just delete the worst of the comments, you ask? Well, we can. But it takes too much time to monitor.” At the time,…

Are Comments Too Much Work? One Newspaper Group Thinks So Read More »

Sample Help Wanted Ad to Get Qualified Sales Reps for Your Group Subscription Offerings

Subscriber Only, Technology / Kathy McCabe

What’s the best way to find a salesperson for group subscriptions? One publisher told us about an ad he placed on Craigslist that helped him find an incredible commission-only salesperson. The key: add trigger words in the copy to get a response from qualified candidates. Sample Ad: “A growing internet based business is looking for motivated, intelligent, responsible individuals to participate in our entry-level Leadership Development Program.This program is meant to provide participants: – A broad overview of…

Sample Help Wanted Ad to Get Qualified Sales Reps for Your Group Subscription Offerings Read More »

What’s The Benefit of A Facebook App For a Paywall Site?

Subscriber Only / Kathy McCabe

Don’t forget about user engagement. That’s the basic lesson of the Facebook app WSJ Social that The Wall Street Journal has just unveiled. If your business Model is a paywall site, your general approach is drive as much traffic as possible to the site and begin the conversion process – through free emails, trials, etc. The WSJ move is reminding us that engagement is important too, even if it takes place off the main site. But will…

What’s The Benefit of A Facebook App For a Paywall Site? Read More »

Local Newspapers Find New Digital Money Makers

Business Strategy, Subscriber Only / Kathy McCabe

While the erecting of a paywall is surely a serious business consideration for local newspapers, NetNewsCheck reports that newspapers are coming up with other innovative ways to boost their digital revenues. At the Suburban Newspapers of America’s publishers’ and advertising directors’ conference in Phoenix this week, news organizations presented case studies on the following digital experiments: The Augusta Chroniclerecently launched a Web reputation monitoring service for small to medium-sized businesses. TheArizona Daily Star has had success in…

Local Newspapers Find New Digital Money Makers Read More »

Why Subscription Sites Must Make Mobile Top Priority

Subscriber Only, Subscription Apps / Kathy McCabe

By 2015, more U.S. Internet users will access the web through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices, according to the latest International Data Corporation Worldwide New Media Market Model Forecast. The company “forecasts that the impact of smartphone and, especially, media tablet adoption will be so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs will first stagnate and then slowly decline. Western Europe and Japan will not be far…

Why Subscription Sites Must Make Mobile Top Priority Read More »

Boston Globe Paywall Strategy: Run Two Sites, One Subscription-Only

Business Strategy, Subscriber Only / Kathy McCabe

This week The Boston Globe launched BostonGlobe.com as an addition to its current site Boston.com. This is all part of the newspaper’s new online paywall strategy: BostonGlobe.com will start charging $3.99 per week in October for a digital susbcription (free for print newspaper subscribers) and feature content that runs in the newspaper and other hard journalism. Boston.com will remain free, supported by advertising, and feature event listings and e-commerce. “What we noticed was that there were…

Boston Globe Paywall Strategy: Run Two Sites, One Subscription-Only Read More »

Amazon to Launch Subscription E-book Service

Business Media and Publishing, Subscriber Only / Kathy McCabe

Amazon is looking to become the Netflix of e-books by launching a subscription service to e-books for an annual fee, reports The Wall Street Journal. There are already sites — such as 24Symbols.com and BookSwim.com — working on a similar model but Amazon has the position and power to negotiate with publishers on a far larger scale and put in place a compelling service.” Amazon has told publishers it is considering creating a digital-book library featuring…

Amazon to Launch Subscription E-book Service Read More »

Consider Adding Ratings and Reviews to Your Subscription Site

Subscriber Acquisition, Subscriber Only / Kathy McCabe

Infocommerce data points has released a fascinating white paper on consumer ratings and reviews. While whole Internet businesses – like TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com – have been built on the review Model, the paper reminds us that ratings and reviews have now become an essential part of any ecommerce site and can certainly have a place on almost any subscription.Here are some key findings from “The Strategic Use of Consumer Ratings and Reviews”: Reviews provide deep, high…

Consider Adding Ratings and Reviews to Your Subscription Site Read More »

Insight to drive subscription growth

Kathy McCabe