Author: Minal Bopaiah - Page 22 - Subscription Insider

3 Must-Haves for Paid Content Sites When Creating a Website for Live Events

News, Subscriber Acquisition / Minal Bopaiah

Since it’s rarely a good idea to make subscription revenues your only source of revenues, savvy digital publishers know that live events are a great way to both build brand awareness and diversify revenue streams. However, an events revenue stream will only be as successful as the marketing that goes behind it. In this week’s Members-Only How-To on Subscription Site Insider, we detail how to market live events to both subscribers and non-subscribers. And the first step…

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Should Subscription Sites Let Subscribers Opt-Out of Auto-Renew?

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscriber Retention / Minal Bopaiah

When it comes to best practices, auto-renew has long been the favored child for increasing retention rates. However, print subscription marketers often tell me they feel uneasy about this marketing tactic since it’s foster parent “subscribe ’til forbid” was a long-established worst practice in the magazine world. That may be why I was recently intrigued by a subscription site that defaulted to auto-renew but let subscribers opt-out of it: So, is this a good idea? The answer is: It…

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Tablet Naysayers! Sesame Street Tells You Why Your Future Depends on Tablets

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscription Apps / Minal Bopaiah

There’s a lot of mixed messages floating around about tablets. GigaOm just published an article “Why tablet magazines are a failure,” in which the author denounces tablet apps as a profitable platform. His numbers sort of back up his claim, although a recent article on Canadian newspaper La Presse and its decision to invest in tablets gives a curt reply to GigaOm: Tablets are an investment in long-term growth, not a quick fix to declining ad…

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Scribd. Launches Subcription Service, Aims to be ‘Netflix’ of eBooks

Business Media and Publishing, Industry Announcements, News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscription Apps / Minal Bopaiah

Book lovers finally have their Netflix equivalent. Scribd. just launched a subscription service where consumers can pay $8.99 a month to get unlimited access to all of the site’s eBooks. This is a different business model than most eBook sellers have adopted. Amazon promotes the outright sale of eBooks, while news sites like the Toronto Star have created eBook subscriptions of curated and limited content from the newspaper. Both models allow consumers to own their eBooks, while…

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What to Learn From The Dallas Morning News’ Dismantled Paywall

Entertainment and Streaming, News, Subscription Apps, Technology / Minal Bopaiah

I love news. Straight, hard, sad story news. So it pains me to see so many newspapers struggling to survive in this digital age. This week, The Dallas Morning News announced that it’s dismantling its paywall, and instead starting a premium site. While there are definitely some news sites who have made metered paywalls work (and not just The New York Times), this might actually be a smart move by the Texan daily. As I’ve said many…

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Case Study Lessons: How to Make A/B Testing Part of Your Company Culture

Entertainment and Streaming, News, Technology / Minal Bopaiah

By now, we all know that A/B testing is a highly worthwhile activity, bound to increase your subscription revenues. Yet, birds-eye projects like split testing button copy or landing pages often get shoved to the side when dealing with daily deadlines and unexpected fires that need to be put out immediately. That’s why we were so impressed when Andrew Warner, Founder and CEO of Mixergy.com and subject of this week’s Members-Only Case Study on Subscription Site Insider,…

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New Kindle Lets Amazon Prime Subscribers Download Videos for Offline Viewing

Entertainment and Streaming, News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscription Apps / Minal Bopaiah

Amazon is releasing its new Kindle Fire HDX later this month (October 18) with a plethora of bells and whistles, but subscription marketers will most be interested in its new feature for Prime subscribers — downloadable videos. That’s right, Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to download videos for offline viewing with the new Kindle. This is an incredibly smart move on the part of Amazon since many consumers want to engage with tablets at times…

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Canada’s Rogers Media to Bundle Digital Magazines in Tablet App Subscription

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscription Apps / Minal Bopaiah

Canadian conglomerate Rogers Media is launching a new tablet app that would allow readers to access a plethora of monthly or weekly digital magazines for one monthly price. More than 100 magazines will be available through Next Issue Canada app, including American titles such as Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. The app is uniquely priced according to publication frequency, i.e., for $9.99 a month, subscribers get access to all monthly titles, and for $14.99 a month,…

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How Subscription Sites Can Capitalize on Re-Imagined Commenting

News, Technology / Minal Bopaiah

The comments section of news and information sites has been getting prolonged attention in recent years, with some claiming it’s a bastion for ugly racism and hate-mongering and others bemoaning that while anonymity and reader feedback is helpful and critical, the resources needed to moderate commenting platforms makes it a bane on many newsrooms. Either way, however, we can all agree that commenting needs an upgrade — and a team of coders from The Times may…

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Why Freemium and Metered Sites MUST Start Requiring Logins for Free Users

News, Subscriber Acquisition / Minal Bopaiah

Subscription sites with hard paywalls are usually pretty good at capturing prospects email — either through a trial funnel (with save attempts) or through required registration with an email address. However, freemium and metered sites are less diligent. In fact, our 2013 Online Subscription Benchmark Report found that only 27% of 202 observed subscription sites require free users to login with an email address to view free content: The reason for this low compliance with a best…

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Insight to drive subscription growth

Minal Bopaiah