The Digital Dilemma In an increasingly digital world, it’s difficult to fathom staying afloat as a print publication. But the transition into digital hasn’t been easy either. First, there’s the slow evolution of exactly what a digital issue means (don’t worry, we have an answer for you). And then, there’s the problem of advertising. Digital […]
A Universal Truth Your readers are, in many ways, the most important part of your publication. They’re the source of your revenue and the driving force of your content. And while you are the common thread they share among them, they come to you for different reasons from different backgrounds at different stages of their […]
Apps Are Not Optional This is probably something you’ve heard before, but it bears quite a lot of repetition: You must have an app. It’s not just how ubiquitous they are. (And they are: can you remember the last time you saw someone out and about without their smartphone? Can you remember the last time […]
Foundations Are Just Beginnings You can’t attract an audience to your digital publication without first creating amazing content – and fortunately, that’s your wheelhouse. Once you’ve got the content, you can protect it (but not too tightly) with a metered paywall, allowing readers a taste of their choosing, without giving away the whole feast. That’s […]
Every Hero Has An Origin Story We’re always happy to talk about how Leaky Paywall works for you – how it helps you reach your readers, grow your audience, and increase your subscription revenue. Have you ever been curious about more of the details, technical or otherwise, of how Leaky Paywall came to be and […]
And now for something completely different… We talk a lot about how to woo your subscribers. But before you can start growing your digital subscriber base, you must answer a very important question: How much should my subscription cost? Pricing a digital publication is a crucial starting point. You have to start in the right place. […]
Untapped Goldmines We’ve talked about this before, but there is an undeniable truth that deserves some time in the spotlight: Your digital publication has a ton of content that is either being overlooked or underutilized. Think about it. You’ve spent years putting out article after article of solid, brilliant, valuable content. There’s no way that […]
Everybody’s Got Issues Publishers already work incredibly hard. Your attention is on creating brilliant content: finding the right audience, the right sources, the right angle, the right words. On top of all that, you have to do the actual publishing: the platform, the distribution, the promotion, the revenue streams. It’s a lot. In recognition of […]
Take a Bow! Many congratulations to Modern Drummer and Einstein Magazine (and if you can’t wait… see the Folio winners now). Their rockstar digital publications nabbed them a place among the prestigious Folio: Ozzie Awards, winner and finalist. Who are they? Einstein Magazine serves the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Modern Drummer is 40 years of […]
The Challenge: Valuable News Hidden Away The Austin Monitor is an online news publisher dedicated to the local political and business happenings of Austin, Texas. Though their content was prolific and valuable, their original hard paywall severely limited the growth of their readership. After all, it’s hard to court new readers when they can only […]
Two Truths Digital paid subscriptions have been a bit of a trial-and-error gig since the invention of the internet. But two seemingly unrelated things have become indisputably clear: The reader needs to be in control of their browsing experience Email marketing is still the number one acquisition and retention channel for digital publishers So what paywall […]
Easy Doesn’t Have To Mean Basic Leaky Paywall is an easy tool to set up. It can be installed easily, you can input your baseline settings easily, and then it can begin increasing your subscriptions easily. Of course, we can make it fancier. We’ve recently discussed some of the ways we have tweaked and customized […]
The Challenge: Classified Ads De-Classified Advertising is often the lifeblood of a magazine, financially speaking. Whether it’s a full-page photo ad with an attached perfume sample or a veritable catalog of classified ads, advertisements are a source of income. To a certain extent, this is true of web-based publications as well. Though banner ads have […]
The Challenge: A Reason To Subscribe For more than 10 years, Soccer Coach Weekly has been the go-to digital publication for the mentors of The Beautiful Game. Replete with drills, training plans, and even personalized advice, Soccer Coach Weekly is an invaluable resource for the entire range of juvenile soccer coaches. Originally launched in 2006, […]
A metered paywall is a powerful tool for increasing your paid subscriptions and ZEEN101’s Leaky Paywall is as user-friendly as it gets. But even the friendliest and most powerful tool can be made more effective with a few tips and tricks. Join us for our FREE webinar and learn how to make the most of […]
Tea Journey Magazine began in 2016 with the knowledge that its readers were out there. A successful Kickstarter campaign (they raised almost $100,000) gave it everything it needed to launch its digital publication as an offering to tea connoisseurs.
A Year of Effort, A Year of Reward 2017 was The Year of Modern Drummer’s Digital Magazine. Originally a print magazine with a decent news blog and articles hidden in PDFs, Modern Drummer expanded to include a true, issue-based online publication. ZEEN101’s Anvil suite of products played a significant role in the process. Over the […]
What’s Good For the Tech… WordCamp for Publishers was a treasure trove of information for the publishing space, both on the marketing and technical side. In terms of marketing, ZEEN101 learned a lot about the value of subscriptions over ads as a revenue source. The technical lessons were, well, technical but they had some broader […]
The Challenge: Strong Content, Low Readership and Subscriptions The Practice is an online magazine published by Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession. It’s a valuable resource for legal professionals, full of news, analysis, and continued learning on the global practice of law. Published first in 2014, and running seven issues per volume in […]
A Learning Experience This August, WordPress held the first ever WordCamp for Publishers in Denver, Colorado. Hosted at the Denver Post building and attended by publishers of every size and shape – including such giants as Condé Nast, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Sun-Times – it was hardly an event that ZEEN101 […]
The Beat Goes On The web-based issues and subscription success of Modern Drummer magazine is getting some attention. Fully customized web issue publishing and archiving, an easy-to-manage metered paywall, and an automated iOS and Android experience, helped drive their results. Revealing insights from Bibblio a Medium Source The content-recommendation–specialists Bibblio interviewed Modern Drummer and recently published an […]
The Project – A Proud Print History Modern Drummer is a comprehensive drumming magazine with a long history of compelling issues. Interviews with titans and rising stars, product reviews, tools and tricks of trade, reflections on the history of music – Modern Drummer has been providing the drumming brotherhood with a wealth of treasure for […]
Twenty years ago, I was a publishing student in Emerson College’s Writing, Literature, and Publishing program. I loved books and print, but—truth be told—I attended the program’s print publishing classes begrudgingly—solely for employ-ability reasons. (Because who wouldn’t want a $25,000/year job with no benefits in New York City…?) The print world didn’t thrill me. After […]
Einstein Magazine was chosen by Folio as 2016 and now 2017 Winner of it’s category for digital publications. It uses our IssueM toolkit for WordPress to manage live web issues. We are very proud that our issue publishing platform runs the core of this publication. Source: 2017 Folio: Ozzie Digital Award Winners Source: 2016 Folio: Ozzies Digital […]
Visitor traffic plummets but subscription conversions increase four fold. What should you do? Watch this video [4:06] to find what the Wall Street Journal discovered and what options you have.
There are some big differences between membership software and a metered paywall… the biggest is that the meter will let Google index and rank all your articles in search. The meter (which gives a reader X number of articles of their choosing before requiring a subscription) also promotes social sharing since any article can […]
Learn how to quickly create a linked banner ad and publish it into your sidebar. This method breaks down into a few simple steps: In your Dashboard create a draft ad Page for this and future ad work Upload the display ad image and insert it into your ad page Link the image to your […]
The trend is turning… the world of low value free information is so underwhelming that we would rather pay for access to great reporting on our special topic of interest. Your readers prefer to pay for better information than they can get for free. So if you run a news site that produces original content for your niche […]
No big surprise, but metered paywalls work and have been working for a number of years now. It makes sense, give away a few free articles (that also happen to show up and rank well in Google search) and then ask the reader to pay to subscribe. The New York Times has been a pioneer […]
The Digiday podcast this week talks with NowThis president Athan Stephanopoulos about his approach to capturing and keeping a digital audience. NowThis (formerly NowThis News) creates news videos for distribution to social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Their average video receives roughly 750,000 views, and they’ve gotten there, Stephanopoulos says, by focusing on improving […]
This question came in last week from a publisher looking to start up. Let’s jump in… in order to get to 5000 subscribers you need to do 2 things very well: produce exclusive “can’t get anywhere else” content produce content your audience “can’t live without“ What subscribers will pay for Let’s take a look at a […]
Like many digital offerings and publications, Crunchyroll is in a niche industry: a global video service for streaming Japanese Anime and Asian media (animated videos). Whether you publish articles, how-tos, or other content, Crunchyroll.com’s methods work. Crunchyroll.com has a tiered membership model: a free level of service which serves up ads to viewers with free memberships […]
If you are considering or implementing a metered paywall you need to read this article. The New Yorker magazine has some very compelling data about the success of it’s metered paywall. As of today they offer 6 free articles before you need to pay to subscribe. At article 4 they interrupt you to promote their […]
In 2014, blogger, Shannon George, wrote a detailed article comparing two online payment processors, PayPal and Stripe . The article, Paypal vs. Stripe, is a great read to understand the differences, pros, and cons of each. If you are using the WordPress platform for your digital publication, both processors can handle subscriptions (recurring and non-recurring). It’s nice to […]
Q: How do you take an existing online magazine (using WordPress and lots of custom functionality) and upgrade it with the most up to date subscription services for users and for writers? A: A great WordPress tech, of course, – some great custom work, top-notch plugins and patience. The on-line periodical, Chronicle of Social Change, […]
Harper’s is the second oldest print magazine in the United States and is making their way in the digital world. They recently decided to employ our Leaky Paywall to give readers 1 free article from their publication before requiring them to subscribe. This gives Harper’s three important benefits: Allows readers to sample a full article […]
Your reader has reached the end of their free article meter and your nag to subscribe pops into the article. What can you do to motivate readers to subscribe? Here are 3 easy to setup nags that work. 1. Embed an image that sells your subscription View a few articles on http://dynastyfootballwarehouse.com until your trigger […]
#4 Ad Blogging – letting advertisers promote 24/7 on your site One of the best kept secrets in advertising is simply giving your advertisers the ability to blog their promotions on your website’s homepage. Let’s call them “ad bloggers” Instead of filling up premium space with banner ads, go ultra premium: let advertisers publish their […]
#3 Your Paywall – readers try before they buy If you think your content solves a pain point for your audience that motivates them enough to pay then you absolutely should be running a metered paywall. What is a metered paywall? Simply a metered paywall lets your reader view X number of articles over a […]
#2 Native Ads – preserving the trust What is a native ad? Remember the advertorial in magazines? Well, native advertising is the same thing. You publish an article that is sponsored or paid as if it were a regular article. The difference is you must flag it to the reader as “Promoted or Sponsored” and […]
Your audience is always willing to “pay” to read your publication. How much they are willing to pay is the unknown you must uncover. Let’s explore the possibilities and put an approach together for your publication. Before we begin, consider what your audience will tolerate: Your reader will always pay by Accepting ads, Subscribing with […]
You run a metered paywall. Your articles are getting found in Google search and they are getting shared in Facebook. Your readers arrive at your site and comb through more articles. They are interested. They might subscribe. How do you encourage them? Do what the Austin Monitor does: Make them want to read the blurred […]
Profile DKonPittsburghSports is a Pittsburgh sports news site run by the award winning journalist Dejan Kovacevic (DK). DK offers readers 2 free articles using a metered paywall. The paywall is integrated with his iOS and Android apps for centralized subscriber management. After a reader views 2 articles either on his website or in his apps, […]
Why are readers drawn to content decades or even centuries old? The answer is a simple one: Articles that were once popular as cutting-edge news are now highly valued for their historical content. Digital archives are typically being made available through premium multimedia subscriptions that command significantly higher rates than print-only subscriptions — while still […]
“Going digital” has been the publisher’s catch-cry ever since the web started to take hold but for many small publishers it’s always been a costly undertaking. In the last few years, that’s all changed as low-cost, often free, products have once again levelled the publishing playing field. Now, the problem is not one of cost […]