Irish Times subscription success

Dundalk Daily

From the Guardian today

The Irish Times reveals the secret of how to get readers to pay for online content

Una O'Hare, the general manager of its website Ireland.com, has prompted many questions and much debate at the World Digital Publishers Conference.

Well into the coffee break a group of half a dozen people were still huddled around Ms O'Hare, attempting to divine her secrets.

Only a handful of newspaper sites dare charge their readers.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are two papers that do for premium content.

Aftonbladet, a news website in Sweden, is another. It launched a paid for website Weight Club, in 2003 and it was reportedly profitable after two months. Now it has 190,000 subscribers paying beween $20 to $40 a month for tips about losing weight and the idea is licenced to other European papers. Aftonbladet Plus a premium subscription service that launched last year, has more than 40,000 subscribers.

Ireland.com, website of the Irish Times, has 50,000 subscribers, not bad for a country of 4 million people and 45% home internet penetration. Broadband runs at 32%.

On the question of making internet pay, Ms O'Hare says: "The answer from Ireland.com is absolutely yes."

Traffic to the site is up 250% since service launched and levels competitive with rivals including state broadcasters RTE.

"It's all in the balance between free and paid content," says Ms O'Hare.

Her main point was the it is difficult to launch a subscription service without a pre-existing online presence.

The Irish Times had this since 1994, when it became the first newspaper in Ireland and the UK to launch on the web.

In 1999 it rebranded as Ireland.com and in 2002 launched its premium subscription service, prompted by a financial crisis at its parent company. It used its 118,000 registered users for its email service as a starting point.

And they launched even after 90% of users told them that they would not pay for premium content. And they left very little free to view.

Traffic plunged, from 25m page impressions pre subscription to 6.5m page impressions.

But the site grew traffic, offering sites about travel, genealogy, dating, health, and by digitising its archive, in a projecdt half paid for by the Ireland library service.

This year traffic is back up to 15m page impressions.

Subscriptions now makes up 63% of revenue, advertisng just 22%.

There are a number of points to make about all of this. Internet advertising is in a parlous state in Ireland, partly due to the poor uptake of broadband. It accounts of a tiny percentage of overall adspend in Eire, and is at much higher levels in other countries.

And after four years, the website is not yet profit-making, but nearly at break-even. And it gets all its content from the Irish Times for free.

How many other newspapers would be as brave as the Irish Times to make its online readers pay. We all know that the answer is very few.

One final point. After putting most of its content behind a subscription firewall, circulation of the print edition of the Irish Times increased by more than 3%.

flogen

Do you want to add a comment and link to this?

DMC

And proper quotation marks too!

r3nu4l

Interesting points but I was one of the people who answered a survey years ago asking if I would pay for premium content. I said 'No' at the time and I still haven't subscribed.

I also stopped buying the Irish Times despite thinking it is the best paper in Ireland so I could save a bit of cash

I'm still not sure that 'premium' content is worth paying for. I used to access it in University because the library had a subscription but I haven't missed it since I left Uni. Brave move indeed but unless they offer something more substantial I won't be buying-in.

Dundalk Daily

I didnt include a link as the site is registration only.

Am I correct in saying that Ireland.com is a seperate company from the newspaper ?

mike65

Beats me why anyone would subscribe, most of what they have as special content could proberly be accessed for free elsewhere in a slightly different form. How much do they charge?

Mike.

flogen

Dundalk Daily wrote:

I didnt include a link as the site is registration only.

What's your point? It's free registration; please provide a link

mike65 wrote:

Beats me why anyone would subscribe, most of what they have as special content could proberly be accessed for free elsewhere in a slightly different form. How much do they charge?

Mike.

24 hours - e2
Week - e7
Month - e14
Year - e79

In all cases (except 24 hours) it works out cheaper than buying the newspaper in print and allows access to a pretty good archive, that said I don't really like reading online over print (easier to scan and ignore things, not portable etc.)... I don't have my own sub, using a company one at the moment, but I never touch the premium content... it seems to consist of articles available in print but not available for free, some of the breaking news stuff and some special reports (on the election etc.)

jimmycrackcorm

The irish times subscription is bad value for money. I queried them on how content it has compared to the print edtion and they said it has nearly all and that "it was a suitable replacement for the print edition, after all it is the Irish Times edition online".

I've since discovered, albeit not actually tried outjust yet, that other papers such as the Sunday business Post and tribune publish subscriptions that give you a PDF edition that is identical to the print edition.

lostexpectation

is this not partly the dispora effect, that's why its called ireland.com

mike65

Maybe so, I did wonder about the use of such a name.

Mike.

Cabaal

Used to love reading the Irish Times for years but as soon as it became sub based I stopped as I didn't think it was worth it and I could find the news else where,.

Its not that I'm not willing to pay for services...hell I paid slashdot 20e for a sub account that lasted about 6 months but I don't see any benefit as its not good value at all

monument

Dundalk Daily wrote:

I didnt include a link as the site is registration only.

Are you sure this was from the Guardian? I can't find it online.

Dundalk Daily wrote:

Am I correct in saying that Ireland.com is a seperate company from the newspaper ?

The Irish Times' Itronics Ltd runs Ireland.com.

Traffic plunged, from 25m page impressions pre subscription to 6.5m page impressions....

This year traffic is back up to 15m page impressions.

Success?

Itronics Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary which operates the Ireland.com website and a number of other businesses, lost €250,000 last year. http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10007825.shtml

Success?

flogen

OK; given that neither myself or monument can find this Guardian article on the Guardian website (which is one of the best when it comes to find articles) and given that DD has decided not to post a link for no apparent reason, I'm going to put this thread into a semi-locked state; in other words I'd ask that no-one else replies or makes comment on this thread until Dundalk Daily provides a link to the cited article.
If s/he fails to do so by this time tomorrow I'll simply lock the thread completely and will not unlock it again.

flogen

Yeah, that's what I thought.