Publishers See Subscriptions Grow into a Sustainable Business

“We are losing subscribers faster than we are gaining new ones.”

“Paywalling content hurts traffic. Subscribers need more benefits to keep them spending.”

“Retaining customers requires a lot of development work to build a better product.”

“Converting readers to members is a slow process.”

“We need to create more value or find a new audience willing to pay for our content. But currently, our efforts are not paying off.”

Does it sound familiar? You’re not alone. A study by The Rebooting on the state of subscriptions among 201 publishers undoubtedly yields one or more recognizable quotes.

But publishers who have subscriptions in the mix are doing better than those who don’t. Not that it’s easy: “Subscriptions are a forever business, not something you launch and never think about again.”

Interesting to review. This is covered:

• Importance of first-party data: If subscriptions do anything, it’s building first-party data. Good for ad sales, but in my opinion, it should mainly be used to better understand your audience and personalize your offerings.
• Saturation: 57% expect that their subscription revenue will grow only by single digits, remain flat, or even decline this year.
• Focus on customer retention and ARPU: Publishers are increasingly focusing on retaining existing customers and raising the average revenue per user. Moving away from the earlier focus on (aggressive) customer acquisition.
• Diversification of revenue streams: The majority are working on diversifying their revenue streams. Smart. Relying solely on subscriptions (as some titles claimed they could during the subscription boom) is not realistic for a media company.

The article is sponsored by Blueconic. After all, The Rebooting is diversifying too!

Industry inspiration from Young Media’s CEO Gert-Jan Lasterie

Sources:

https://therebooting.lpages.co/the-state-of-subscriptions-report/

https://digiday.com/sponsored/why-ai-revenue-diversification-and-ad-spend-are-the-defining-2024-trends-for-media-companies/