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Artists from all over the world share their sketches daily - lots of exotic shinies to see.

Business Class: Freemium for News?

by Oliver Reichenstein

I had a perspective-changing talk on the subject of pay walls with the chief executive of a big publishing company (no, I can’t tell you who). He asked me what I think about pay walls. I told him what I always say: The main currency of news sites is attention not dollars, and that I believe that it is the publisher’s job to turn that attention into money, to keep the attention machine running. He nodded and made the following, astonishing statement:

“I can’t see pay walls working out either. But we need to do something before we lose all of our current subscribers. Sure. It’s a tough business environment, but… But the flight industry is a tough environment too, and they found ways. So tell me: Why do people fly Business Class? In the end, an airplane brings me to the same place regardless of whether I fly Economy or Business Class, and the massive price-increase I pay doesn’t compare the difference in value.”

He asked whether I knew of a way to apply this logic to online news. What would a Business Class news site look like?

“People pay for Business Class because they don’t want to be tortured in Economy. They get faster lanes at the security check. They get an extra glass of champagne. The stewards are more attentive. They get off the plane more quickly. They get the feeling of a higher social status.”

And he added that he wished that there was a way to lead each reader through to Economy again, to again show what they avoided by being in Business Class.

Interesting take on paid subscriptions for news.

I must confess, I'm one of those people who will not get a subscription even for news content I tend to like. NYT is the one that comes to mind. I find I like most of their articles, but ever since they put in the article cap (but still allowed users who were *linked* to their content to see said content), I simply Google every article I'm interested in, and find the 'back door' to see the content.

If they had a real distinction between economy and 'premium' though, I might just stop using Google as a back door.

Oh, and of course, they would have to properly convince me of the premium experience. Right now, for NYT, it just isn't coming through.

The user doesn’t come out of nowhere. We don’t land on your page and then head happily to those social networks to promote you, just because you have a button on your site. We find content through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc., not the other way around.

• Whoever uses social networks to find content, usually begins the web journey there and goes back naturally. We don’t need to be reminded of what network we use on the way. We know. We came from there.
• For those who don’t use social networks the social media buttons are completely useless.
• If readers are too lazy to copy and paste the URL, and write a few words about your content, then it is not because you lack these magical buttons.

Some people probably do use those buttons. Maybe even a lot of people. And maybe you do and think I’m dead wrong about this. Maybe I am. And maybe someone needs to do some serious research to know for sure. I won’t deny all that. What I know for sure is that most people who know how to use social media also know how to share URLs:

“We removed FB buttons and traffic from Facebook increased. Reason: instead of ‘liking’ articles, readers share it on their timeline.” —@smashingmag

If you provide excellent content, social media users will take the time to read and talk about it in their networks. That’s what you really want. You don’t want a cheap thumbs up, you want your readers to talk about your content with their own voice.

This is too true!

In fact, although I have a Pinterest account, I do NOT use 'pin it' buttons. Ever. For some reason I am convinced that using the bookmarklet app gives me more control of exactly what goes on my Pinterest.

...now I'm wondering how that applies to other social networks, and other people.

Article also includes some disturbing info on what Those Cursed Bahtuns may be doing to your site.

More thoughts after discussion with a colleague:
Even if incoming traffic rises when buttons are removed... how do we (as webfolk) track and attribute the traffic sources?

Sure, if you've plonked banners all over the place, you recognise where *that* traffic was from. But stuff that people are sharing all by themselves over their own social networks?

When a user pokes a button on your site, you know about it.

When a user does what I've done here, which is to quote and provide a link back to the shinies... you, as site owner who wants to know, you have no clue what I've done.

And short of going through EVERY unfamiliar referring link to see where it came from... you'll never get those numbers. You'll never be able to track what people are doing / have done with your content.

Conclusion:
The buttons are there because without things to count, beansuits get twitchy.

Well now, that's depressing. XD

All the above being said, this is incredibly funny (don't click if you have epilepsy, and yes I'm serious).

Another interesting take on it. Text and safe for epileptics.

What's the current impact of piracy on the book publishing industry?

Brian O'Leary: We don't know. Some people will tell you that it's the biggest problem facing publishing or that ebook piracy will kill publishing. None of those perspectives are informed by solid data.

We undertook research two-and-a-half-years ago with O'Reilly, and we've been studying Thomas Nelson as well, to measure the impact of piracy on paid content sales. We approached it as if it were cooperative marketing. We would look at the impact of what sales looked like before there was piracy, say for four to eight weeks, and then we'd look at the impact of piracy afterward. Essentially, if the net impact of piracy is negative, then you would see sales fall off more quickly after piracy; if it were positive, the opposite.

Data that we collected for the titles O'Reilly put out showed a net lift in sales for books that had been pirated. So, it actually spurred, not hurt, sales. But we were only looking at O'Reilly and Thomas Nelson. The results are not emblematic of publishing overall. It could be more conservative, it could be less conservative. We just don't have enough data. I've tried to get other publishers to join in, but it really hasn't been a successful mission. Even at a low- or no-cost offer, publishers seem reluctant to collect the data required to reveal the true impact of book piracy.

Now, you could argue that O'Reilly's target audience is different from say, music and film industry audiences - and you'd be right.

However, O'Reilly's target audience is much more technologically savvy than the general music and film industry audiences - and therefore much more able to grab stuff and run away without paying, if so inclined.

And yet there was a net lift in sales for books that had been pirated.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of chest-banging around the issue of DRM, and not all that much hard data or research. Need moar infoz!