Comments on: Marco Arment’s digital magazine and the paywall vs. sharing problem

By: Angus Whitton

Angus Whitton — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 23:37:33 +0000

It’s far too early to tell what will happen in the future – apart from there will be a lot of casualties.

By: Malcolm CasSelle

Malcolm CasSelle — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:55:52 +0000

The key to finding the balance between paid and free content is through testing. Audiences feelings about the value of the brand and content both play a role. In short, not one size fits all.

Content owners are best served to have a platform that allows them to change the business logic quickly based upon data collected. We find by shifting pricing, subtle placement of text and graphics, and many other factors dramatically impact profitability and user experience.

A paywall strategy is based on constant revision and experimentation and it can always be improved.

By: NewsWhip

NewsWhip — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:02:26 +0000

I don’t believe that earning subscription revenue and being part of the social web are mutually exclusive – I think this idea stems from the “one-size-fits-all” approach to content that brands have managed to shed much faster than publishers.

One core piece of content can support lots of different media optimised for sharing: lightweight pieces that inform and entertain – we could be talking about photographs, segments of video interviews, infographics, or an excerpt that’s edited to be self-sufficient. These channel-optimised bits of content, valuable and shareable in and of themselves, can serve as a vehicle for driving traffic and interest to the paywalled, high value add ten thousand word article. You don’t have to give away the farm to bring a crowd to the barn dance.

By: Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:05:19 +0000

“As with most of the essays in The Magazine, the writer was free to publish on his own blog as well”: I should clarify this, as we didn’t think so many people would amplify that angle. Marco from the start has contracted for non-exclusive rights to the work we license (writing, photography, and illustration), but asks for just 30 days of exclusive rights following publication. After that, it’s not just that a writer or artist has certain freedoms we’ve allowed. Rather, the creator has all of his or her rights back (and retains copyright to boot). We retain a sliver of rights for reproduction. That’s the way it used to be for freelancers, and I like that Marco wanted to offer those rights for his publication. (It’s one of the reasons I approached him about becoming its editor.)

I’d argue that we differ from The Daily in goals. The Daily wanted to become a widely read publiation that would be perhaps the de facto iOS newspaper. They spent enormously. And they had to capture a huge audience to make it work. Gaining 100,000 subscribers is fairly amazing.

The Magazine’s finances and goals are much more slender: We want to be a source of unique and interesting content to our subscribers, and everything we do is oriented around that. We can’t ignore attracting new subscribers (or replacing lost ones), but we really think about our subscribers as patrons that are having content created that meets their interest.