Paywall Podcast - Subscription strategies for news and magazine publishers

Pete (00:00)
in this episode, I'm going to throw ESPN under the bus and rightfully so. Yeah. So, and I want to, what I want to talk about, ⁓ in this pricing themed episode is the simplicity of the funnel and meeting expectations for your readers, ⁓ and nurturing, ⁓ readers into kind of an upgrade path. So, ⁓ we get lots of questions on pricing.

and we did an episode back in April. There's a lot of good stuff there. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend go back and listen to that. This one's gonna be really focused on the funnel and the of the nurturing experience. But first, I have to throw ESPN under the bus big time. It kinda pissed me off.

So I was watching some of the early rounds of the US Open and enjoying that and the ESPN app worked great on the, it's running on a PlayStation.

And then the quarterfinals came along. And I'm one of those Disney plus bundle subscribers. I get the Disney, I get the Hulu, I get the ESPN premium. I don't know what they call it, something. And so on the quarterfinals, it wouldn't load. I could not play one of the quarterfinal matches that I wanna watch. And so.

Tyler (01:31)
Mm-hmm.

Pete (01:46)
I'm like, what is happening? So I'm texting my tennis buddies. Hey, you guys have ESPN? Is it working? yeah, I got it. No problem. But I'm like, what is happening? It takes me 20 minutes to figure out that I'm on the wrong plan. So here, yes, here they're, letting me watch the U S open. And then at the quarter finals, they're like, sorry, you can't watch the quarter finals unless you pay more. Okay. Let's see where this is going. So.

Tyler (02:12)
Hmm.

Pete (02:16)
Their expectations, my expectations as a paying customer and whatever the bundle is, was that I'd be able to start watching the US Open, which I did, and continue to watch the US Open. So not only did they like completely blow out my expectations, they didn't nurture me at all. I didn't even know I needed to upgrade my plan. And then when I went to Disney Plus and pulled up that account, there were like 12 different subscription options, maybe

Maybe 18, there were a zillion of them. I was like, wow, okay, this is not right. So there, ESPN, do better, come on, Disney, do better. This was not a good experience. And I went from, I think I was paying like 11 bucks a month or something like that to almost $30 a month in order to watch the finals. And then of course, after the finals, what did I do? I downgraded, right?

Tyler (02:48)
Mm.

Of course.

Pete (03:15)
Right? Of course.

So if they had sort of handled me differently, like when I was signing up and it's like ESPN and maybe they knew that I liked tennis, it's like the only sport I watch would be tennis, like you and golf, right? It's like, so if somehow like they said, like, look, you know, you want full access to, know, the majors, the grand slams, you know, you pay, pay a little bit more or whatever. And then that would be my expectation.

Tyler (03:29)
Yes, yes.

Pete (03:44)
I would pay more and I'd probably forget about it just leave the subscription instead of now I'm getting I'm hassled and I have to like upgrade and downgrade and just I'm gonna you know blow up right okay all right

Tyler (03:53)
Yeah, yeah. I relate

to that in the golf world. If anyone listening is a golf fan, you know that you have to like, you've got to have a Paramount Plus account, have to have a Peacock account, you have to have an ESPN account because golf is like smattered across every single network in the midst of a tournament. So like you could watch the Masters, you know, you can see some on ESPN, some on CBS, some on, you know, whatever other networks. So yeah, I totally get the frustration of that. But you're...

Pete (04:18)
That's torturous.

Tyler (04:21)
actually being tortured by the same network who covers all parts of it and being disrupted right in the middle of it. Like that's probably not the time to ask for an upgrade when people think that they should have access to the thing they've been watching for the whole week or however long the tennis, you know, matches go on for. So yeah, I could totally understand.

Pete (04:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Expectations were just shot. Okay. So let's, let's like, let's fall into publishing now after that story. Cause this really was about meeting expectations and not, and, blowing, blowing the expectations of the water, not nurturing me, giving me absolutely shitty experience. And, ⁓ I, I almost canceled. I was almost like, you know what? This was so bad. And I, know, getting so frustrated and I know I'm not alone.

So I'm gonna pivot a little bit to a publisher, a local news publisher here. We're gonna take a look at, and ⁓ what I wanna get to is, well, what should you be doing, right? And we're talk a little bit more about what you should not be doing before I get to what you should be doing. Yeah, I know, you're looking at this and you're like, in the world is happening? Okay, let me set the stage for listeners. This is a... ⁓

Tyler (05:25)
yeah.

Pete (05:36)
Daily news publisher in a large metro area. They have a huge audience around them and they are they're doing their own thing, right? They're going with there's a weekly subscription for $2.99 a week. There's a monthly subscription for $9.99 per month. And then you can purchase a day plan for 99 cents. There is no annual plan. Okay.

Think about subscriptions as like you're driving a nice car and all the controls are in the right place, right? The steering wheel is here, the turn signal's there, you know? And what's the EV world doing? They're putting controls on screens and everybody hates it. So it's like, give people the monthly, give people the annual, and that could be it. Simplicity wins, right? And give them access to everything if you're on those two plans. But in this case, ⁓ they...

Tyler (06:32)
Yeah.

Pete (06:35)
They think that they have the formula figured out and I went and looked ⁓ at their numbers and guess what their number one plan is? You can probably guess it's the monthly, right? Monthly subscription. ⁓ The annual, they have annual plans running from previous days is almost as high as the monthly and they're not even selling it. So people do want annual plans.

Tyler (06:49)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Pete (07:05)
And

then the weekly is about about 60 60 percent of the monthly and then the day passes is in the teens For a period of time it's it's it's even lower and then it's just It's it's a mess. This is a mess. Don't do this. This there's no way now The good news is whatever plan you buy the expectations are I get full access to the content

Tyler (07:25)
Yeah.

Pete (07:34)
The bad news is, is that you have no path to nurture readers towards, right? ⁓ Pete, what are you talking about? Nurturing a path, okay. Let's look at a publisher that's doing a little bit of a better job. This is the Daily Memphian, which they're doing a bad job because they have a pop-up on their Pay Now page. So we'll get out of that. Okay. So.

If you're in the, well, whatever space you're in and you're selling subscriptions, think about nurturing the readers. The monthly subscription is gonna be for slightly more volatile readers that wanna try you out and they'll still kinda jump on monthly. They may leave their subscription at monthly forever. That absolutely happens. The annual plan, so here's the monthlies here, annual second.

They're calling it most popular and I would agree with that. Generally speaking, I think you might too. the annual plan is for the reader that's like, yeah, Hey, I'm in. I like your stuff. Here's my money for the year. I'll save a couple bucks. And then they're less volatile. And that's probably a bad word, but they're less likely to turn, ⁓ because they're on that on the annual. So moving readers from monthly to annual, even though you might make a little less money is a good thing because they'll stick around. They'll turn less. Okay.

Tyler (08:36)
Thank

Pete (09:01)
What do you do beyond that? Now, the Memphians got a two-year subscription. I'm not really sure that's the way to go. ⁓ I would say here's, and I've just listed this out here, here's the nurturing on-ramp for your readers. Start with, no surprise, free. You get a free registration in place. ⁓ You capture an email, throw it on your list, give them access to one or two more free articles a month. Off you go.

Then they decide to pay. Okay, I'm gonna choose a monthly, I'm gonna choose an annual ⁓ when that newsletter's been driving everybody back and you're getting the upgrade message. Okay, great, now you're on monthly. Nurturing from monthly to annual, that's a step. It's a small step, but it's a signal. Hey, I might as well save the money since I'm in this for the long haul. Okay, what would the third card be on the right hand side, Tyler, what do you think?

Tyler (09:55)
If

I had to guess, I'd say gift subscriptions or some sort of corporate type plan.

Pete (10:02)
oooo ⁓

Yes. And the third one, you got two of them. One more. Donor.

Tyler (10:15)
I don't know, tell me. Right.

I didn't know they were non-profit, I guess if they're not, it still doesn't matter, right? Just giving people another way to get money is always a good thing, regardless of where they are in their funnel, but more so if they've already signed up for a yearly plan, Giving them an option to give you more money is likely a good idea because they've shown a willingness to pay for whole year.

Pete (10:24)
right.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. And, and on the, so you nailed all three and that, and that's all part of that potential nurturing. Now every publisher is different. So you're listening to this and you might lean more towards, I could probably ask, ask my best readers for more money to support our mission, even if you're nonprofit or gift subscriptions is something that's super, super, underrated. ⁓ I see, I talk to publishers every time they get their, their subscriptions going.

And I say, Hey, what, what about gift subscriptions? And most of the time it's like, yeah, that's a good idea. Well, if data from the print world, you know, in the back in the history of publishing, ⁓ it is very clear. If you do the research, and I've talked to print experts, 20 % of your paid subs should be gift subscriptions. Like that's where that's, that's the bar that they shoot for. And.

So you have, maybe that's your third card, right? Gift subscriptions. ⁓ Maybe it is corporate subscriptions, bulk subscriptions. And if that were the case, if you're gonna sell to Panera Bread ⁓ in restaurant access or to schools or government or businesses or whatever, have a card that says corporate access or group access or something like that. And what I would do is I would take them to a new page that had.

Tyler (12:07)
Yeah.

Pete (12:08)
all the sort of group access options and most likely a big form that's like, hey, get in touch and we'll talk about what you need. And then, you know, do they need physical location access? Do they need access by employee's email addresses? Do they need access by seats, you know, five, 10, 20 seats. And you can use all those tools at the same time, but bringing them to a page where they fill out a form and have a chat about it. That could be the third card, depending on your...

So what your lien is So and you can see here if you're looking at the website you have ⁓ gift subscriptions here. You have donations here There's some additional options here Yeah, here's the group of corporate colleges and universities. So I'd say they're I'd say their subscription Landing page is pretty pretty decent like this would be a good one to look at and think about the products that that you sell so

Think nurturing, expectations are, sometimes a publisher will be like, yeah, well, we have like our free sort of valuable content and then we have our premium content. And it's like, well, I'm gonna sell a subscription and then there's gonna be like the premium plus subscription. And we've tried that, I don't know if you've tried that in the past, we've tried it, never really worked out. The lines too blurry, like, again, you pay.

Tyler (13:26)
Hmm.

Pete (13:37)
You get in there and then, wait, I gotta pay more to read to upgrade or whatever, unless there's a really specific need for it. ⁓ People don't read, they're rushed, they don't understand anything. They pay, think they have access. That's kind of as simple as it needs to be.

Tyler (13:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Pete (13:56)
Okay. Cool. So, ⁓ I just wanted to get that off my chest. ⁓ ESPN really ticked me off and I want, I want, I want publishers to understand when they're talking about pricing, ⁓ it's a path. It's a, it's a, it's a nurturing path. Your reader starts in one spot. Think about how to get them to the next spot and the next spot, you know, could be, like maybe it's an event. Right. and, you, you,

You're only offering it or you're first offering it to paid subscribers and then maybe free registered readers and then your general newsletter list or something like that. Could be a lot of different things. Okay. ⁓ That's what I wanted to say. Tyler, know we talked earlier. You've ⁓ been working with a publisher that did something very unique in the kind of the donation arena.

and they give me more money arena. It's sorry to be so grass. ⁓ Yeah, let's jump in.

Tyler (14:58)
No, yeah. Yeah. Shall we? ⁓ Okay.

Yeah. So if you're a nonprofit, you know that it is quite complicated or can be complicated to generate subscription revenue or membership revenue that the language gets a bit blurry because of your nonprofit status. You don't want to create a transaction. You're trying to

trying to get people to donate. so ⁓ one thing that we've done with a number of different nonprofits is giving people an option for free content, but kind of making it a hassle a bit. So you can sign up for free, you get your free article, you go to your third article, it's like, I can...

I can become a member and get unlimited access or I see this little tiny line at the bottom that says I can renew my free plan for 24 hours. Oh, okay, fine. And if they're coming back over and over and over and they're being hassled by this 24 hour time limit, they're going to upgrade and become a member or at least become a donor member to stop the madness of turning off the free content. Yeah, the friction is being reduced by donating money.

Pete (16:06)
you

Friction.

Tyler (16:20)
Is it all still free? Absolutely. I'm not an attorney, I don't know how that stuff plays out legally, but it's still available for free. It's just a ton of friction. So if you donate, you can remove that friction. Similar to add free plans, you pay all that friction and chaos is gone and now you can access the content.

Pete (16:42)
that. I absolutely love that. so what you're saying is you're, you're setting up, you have maybe one free article and then there's a free registration that pops and, and in that free registration, you, you get access to all the content for a limited period of time, like a window of like 24 hours and that's it. And then when you come back and you're looking and and the, you get another like

prompt that says, you can pay and we won't bother you anymore. Or you can continue for free. You just need to kind of re-register. that sound right?

Tyler (17:20)
That's basically it. ⁓ Most are doing one free article and then hitting them with that upgrade messaging. And then it starts to be a timeline-based approach versus the meter approach. ⁓

Pete (17:33)
Right, right.

And that makes total sense because we pay to avoid friction today. Time is the currency that we love. Like if you have ⁓ the income and you love YouTube, you'll probably subscribe to YouTube Premium. You know, it's 15 bucks a month, but it removes all the ads. And as somebody who did do that...

I gotta say that the YouTube experience is pretty phenomenal without the ads.

So this is kind of a different way.

Tyler (18:07)
Yeah, now

that you mention that when I watch YouTube, it's awful. Especially when you're watching more than one or two videos on something, it's ⁓ being interrupted by those like, you know, non-stop ads is a lot.

Pete (18:12)
It's pretty bad.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's

because YouTube needs a free registration so you can get a taste of what the ad free plan looks like. Mm-hmm, okay. All right, one more. Right, yeah, exactly. Hey, they're doing so well with their product, it's hard to motivate. ⁓ Okay, so there is another story that I'm tickle your memory banks on.

Tyler (18:29)
right. Yeah, give me a trial. Nurture us ESPN and YouTube.

Yeah, I think they're okay.

Pete (18:47)
a different publisher and this one was all about asking for ⁓ contribution for, I think for a specific investigative reporting. Does that sound, is that ringing a bell?

Tyler (19:04)
⁓

Pete (19:05)
You had mentioned to me, then I thought this was super interesting, that this particular, yeah, this particular publisher was actively campaigning once in a while to pull in more donations, not a nonprofit, looking because of a specific story they were working on.

Tyler (19:10)
yes.

Yeah, I can talk about the most recent campaign that they did that's sort of similar. But yes, in essence, there's a local publisher that we work with and on occasion they'll do a campaign to help pay for coverage of a specific topic. Perhaps that topic requires a FOIA or any other kind of, you know, ⁓ extra money to cover for the community. And so

Pete (19:33)
Okay.

Tyler (19:58)
This particular publisher will just flat out ask their audience for help with producing this content and plea to them through a newsletter campaign. And boy, do people respond to that. most recently they sent out a campaign asking people to simply upgrade if they wanted from a $12 or $10 a month plan.

Pete (20:02)
you

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tyler (20:29)
to $20 per month. Right? Double your subscription. And of course there was a plea for why. We've invested in this. We've invested in an events calendar. We've invested in more reporters. We've done this. We've done that. We're doing everything we can to cover this community. We really need your support. Would you consider?

Pete (20:30)
Whoa.

Mmm.

Tyler (20:50)
upgrading your plan to a $20 per month plan.

Pete (20:54)
like a super supporter kind of, yeah.

Tyler (20:55)
That's it. That's it. And so

the only thing that the user had to do or the subscriber had to do was just reply yes, the same way that we get those text messages, you know, just like reply to the text message kind of thing. And at first, you know, I don't know, handful of people, next day it's like over 60 people. And as of yesterday, over 100 people had said,

Pete (21:07)
Hmm. Interesting.

my God.

Tyler (21:25)
Yes, please do this. I am happy to do it. With some people even saying, you know what, on top of that, I want to give you an extra $100.

Pete (21:27)
Wow.

Wow.

Tyler (21:35)
They were like, can you just charge the card on file? Yeah, so no signing up, no fancy upgrade button, just reply yes and we'll take care of it from there. We'll deal with the hassle of giving us more money. So any publisher listening to this, if you've made it this far in the podcast, maybe this is gonna be two podcasts based on all the topics. If you're considering doing a price,

Pete (21:38)
Wow.

Mmm.

I love that. Oh, nice.

you

Tyler (22:04)
Upgrade like we talk about that all the time like you should do a price Upgrade for your existing customers at some point like they shouldn't be paying you five dollars a month for the end of time like you you can do You can do price ⁓ upgrades on existing customers One thing you can do to test the waters to see to take the temperature of your audience is something like this

Pete (22:27)
Mmm, I love it. I love it. Yeah, there's no downside. You're talking about why you need the extra revenue for all the things you're doing for your subscribers. ⁓ then there's all upside. You get a bunch of people that not only say yes, and they give you more. That's crazy. That's crazy.

but makes a lot of sense. Boy, what I love about this, Tyler, it's like concierge, concierge donation strategy. We'll take care of you. You just, there's no friction. Yeah, you don't have to click a button. You don't have to fill out a form. You just say yes.

Tyler (22:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just.

just

reply yes, that's it. And most people were doing that and obviously they were, you know, they were getting lovely comments from the community about, know, we really appreciate everything that you do, blah, blah, blah. And at the end of this, this publisher is going to add, if my math is correct, over a thousand dollars per month in, you know, new revenue from existing customers that was just sitting there if you had asked for it.

Pete (23:12)
you

Wow,

that's amazing. Okay, so there's some homework for our crowd, our listeners. ⁓ Would you say that based on this specific response, it sounds like it's only been a few days, ⁓ is the signal there, you think, from the response to this publisher to be like, huh, maybe we should increase our prices a little bit? What do you think?

Tyler (24:01)
I don't think they were doing it as a test to see whether or not they should double their rates or not. ⁓ I think they are really wanting to add another reporter to their, at least a part-time ⁓ stringer as they call them in the journalism world. ⁓ And so this was one way I think to help kind of get that ⁓ accomplished.

Pete (24:14)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's cool. Yeah, I'm not suggesting they go and double their subscription price, but like going, if they're, I don't know what they're, if they're 10 a month, like go to 12. I feel like it is taking the temperature of the readership and seeing what kind of responses they give.

Tyler (24:38)
Right.

Yeah, I

forget how many exactly, but I know it was north of like 1500 people that received it or 1200 people somewhere in that range. So that's not a bad response rate to say, hey, yes, please double my payment.

Pete (24:58)
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, okay.

for a few days, for two days. my God.

Yeah, right. That's amazing. That's Cool. All right. Tyler, I think that's the pod. Good stuff. Catch you next time.

Tyler (25:09)
Yeah.