Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving — but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don’t? Read more »
What can a book look like in the digital age and how will people pay for it? This is one of the themes we’ll be exploring at paidContent Live on April 17 in New York Read more »
Everyone uses YouTube, but how exactly do people discover new videos? We asked both web video professionals like Amy Pham and Zadi Diaz as well as your average 12 year old girl to find out. Read more »
Marco Arment softened the paywall around his iPad-only magazine because his content was not benefiting from the social-sharing effect that the web enables — a microcosm of the dilemma that many other publishers are also facing. Read more »
Dutch newspaper publisher Jan-Jaap Heij talks about why he decided to launch a mobile app that allows readers to subscribe to individual writers for a monthly fee, and how personal brands are the future of journalism. Read more »
Both Andrew Sullivan — the conservative blogger who recently announced that he is going independent — and former Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer are taking the same approach to media: connect with your fans, and then ask for help. Read more »
Blogging superstar Andrew Sullivan dropped a bombshell on Wednesday by saying he is leaving The Daily Beast and setting up his own subscription-based website. Can he become the first prominent success story in what some have called the move towards “post-industrial” journalism? Read more at GigaOM »
Longform journalism site Longreads is giving paying members exclusive access to long-form content that is not available elsewhere on the web. The first selection is a chapter from Charles Duhigg’s bestselling book “The Power of Habit.” Read more »
Is offering your readers membership benefits a better approach to revenue generation than putting up a hard paywall? The tech commentary site Techdirt thinks so, and has launched some interesting new features that other traditional media companies might want to pay attention to. Read more at GigaOM »
The Financial Times and New York Times are at or close to the point where subscription revenue exceeds advertising revenue. This means their paywalls are working, but it also means advertisers are fleeing — and the implications of that for journalism could be significant. Read more at GigaOM »
Penny Arcade, a webcomic publisher and event producer, is trying to use Kickstarter to finance its web operations for a year so it can replace traditional banner advertising with a reader-centric model. Could traditional publishers learn something from this crowdfunding experiment? Read more at GigaOM »
Publishers saw the iPad as a chance to turn back the clock and convince consumers to pay for content in a new form. But that dream has collided with reality, and now some content producers — including MIT’s Technology Review — say the standalone content app is dead. Read more at GigaOM »
Big funding round for the digital content subscription and billing specialist Zuora: the company has raised $36 million in a Series D round… Read more »
