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Irish Independent New App

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    #32
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,610 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Nice to see they put what looks like a lump of turd beneath the number, very apt.

    Sounds like a disaster to me, 7k subs upon launch does not bode well for the future. Pretty sure I saw them claim before that their site gets over 400,000 viewers per day. So if less than 2% of that number are willing to pay for it so far its not looking great.

    Where to next? Will they get their sales team to try and strongarm every govt department into paying 9.99 per civil servant?

    Their main champion of the taxpayer subsidising the media Dimmy Tooley lost his Dail seat too. They're going to have to find another Fianna Failer to take up the slack.


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    #33
    passremarkable
    Registered Users Posts: 4,509 ✭✭✭passremarkable


    That’s a very poor return.
    The premium is too high per month.
    It should be €5/6 max a month
    They would get more if an uptake then I’d imagine
    Priced too High I feel


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    #34
    callaway92
    Registered Users Posts: 14,330 ✭✭✭✭callaway92


    They'd surely be considered very poor numbers. You aren't going to get big increases from there, and steady increases will be minimal. There'll obviously be a drop-off from the original numbers too.

    Big issue with the 'Premium' guff is it looks to just be random articles become 'Premium' ones or not. Not purposefully done.

    Premium Today - 'Can we win Eurovision 2020 with Lesley Roy's Story of My Life?'
    Premium Today - 'Dear David Coleman: My daughter's whinging really winds me up. How can I help her to stop?' - A parenting article.

    I mean.... what the hell


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    #35
    dohboy
    Registered Users Posts: 599 ✭✭✭dohboy


    Don't seem like bad numbers to me tbh. It's less than a month since it launched.


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    #36
    callaway92
    Registered Users Posts: 14,330 ✭✭✭✭callaway92


    dohboy wrote: »
    Don't seem like bad numbers to me tbh. It's less than a month since it launched.

    But if you don't get the initial 'bounce', when do you get it?


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    #37
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,610 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    dohboy wrote: »
    Don't seem like bad numbers to me tbh. It's less than a month since it launched.

    They look like pretty awful numbers to me. I mean when they went premium about half of all the content was put behind the paywall. So the choice for readers at that point is pretty stark- either pay up or forget about using the app altogether because theres no point annoying yourself scrolling the homepage when you cant read half the articles on it. Plus you'll find many of the same news stories on other sites for free anyway. As a result of the paywall I deleted the app within a couple of days of them going behind the paywall, would imagine lots of other people did the same or just stopped using it.

    Now if all they got was 7,000 subs and they've claimed to have 400,000 daily viewers in the past then that means less than 2% of the readers actually paid up. The other 98% dont see it as worth paying for, if they did they'd subscribe. 7,000 subs @ 9.99 a month gives them an annual turnover of 910,000 from subs. Its hard to see how they can pay all those journalists and editors wages, rent, utilities, etc on that kind of turnover.


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    #38
    dohboy
    Registered Users Posts: 599 ✭✭✭dohboy


    callaway92 wrote: »
    But if you don't get the initial 'bounce', when do you get it?

    I would call 7k subs a bounce.


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    #39
    jack presley
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,687 ✭✭✭✭jack presley


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    Its hard to see how they can pay all those journalists and editors wages, rent, utilities, etc on that kind of turnover.

    They still sell actual newspapers too so their turnover isn't limited to the subs.


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    #40
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,610 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    jack presley wrote: »
    They still sell actual newspapers too so their turnover isn't limited to the subs.

    They also give a lot away for free as well. And the numbers that are sold at full price are plummeting year on year, this paywall is an attempt to plug a hole in their turnover. Their advertising revenues have been completely hollowed out by the likes of Donedeal, Carzone, Daft, etc and now their only regular advertising is
    by supermarkets and government departments

    Ultimately all newspapers will be going digital, I doubt we will be seeing physical copies in a decades time when the main market who buy them on a daily basis are slowly dying out. If they cant get digital to pay they'll eventually be in trouble.


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    #41
    jack presley
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,687 ✭✭✭✭jack presley


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    They also give a lot away for free as well. And the numbers that are sold at full price are plummeting year on year, this paywall is an attempt to plug a hole in their turnover. Their advertising revenues have been completely hollowed out by the likes of Donedeal, Carzone, Daft, etc and now their only regular advertising is
    by supermarkets and government departments

    Ultimately all newspapers will be going digital, I doubt we will be seeing physical copies in a decades time when the main market who buy them on a daily basis are slowly dying out. If they cant get digital to pay they'll eventually be in trouble.

    Ah yeah, I know all that and I'm not disputing any of it. But while physical newspapers are at death's door, they're probably still selling around 50,000 copies a day and at €2 a pop it adds a good chunk to the turnover figure.

    Now when newspapers are officially dead, of course 7k subscribers won't work but I'd imagine we're a few years away from that yet and who knows what the model for journalism will be then.


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    #42
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,610 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Yeah they'll survive for now but it doesnt look good long term. Say they are doing 50k sales at 2 euro a day that gives them 2.4million print gross income a month. With a sub of 9.99 a month in order to replace that 2.4m print income they would need to ultimately sell 240,000 subs.

    That is a long long way off the 7k subs they have begun with. For sure they can build on that 7k number over time but if I were the CFO you would hoping of getting at least 10% of the readership to pay up. If 40,000 people signed up upon launch at least you've a good starting point to build upon, 7,000 subs is starting from a very, very low base. Its hard to see how they could even get to 40k now dont mind eventually getting to 240,000 to replace the inevitable loss of print income.

    Their big problem IMO really is the content just isnt worth paying for. Its not specialised and nor is it in depth and much of it is found for free elsewhere. You never come away from reading the Indo thinking wow Im really glad I read that article like you might from the Guardian or Sunday Times. Its a take it or leave it publication and so far with this paywall strategy many people have chosen to leave it.


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    #43
    Gloomtastic!
    Registered Users Posts: 8,319 ✭✭✭Gloomtastic!


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    Yeah they'll survive for now but it doesnt look good long term. Say they are doing 50k sales at 2 euro a day that gives them 2.4million print gross income a month. With a sub of 9.99 a month in order to replace that 2.4m print income they would need to ultimately sell 240,000 subs.

    That is a long long way off the 7k subs they have begun with. For sure they can build on that 7k number over time but if I were the CFO you would hoping of getting at least 10% of the readership to pay up. If 40,000 people signed up upon launch at least you've a good starting point to build upon, 7,000 subs is starting from a very, very low base. Its hard to see how they could even get to 40k now dont mind eventually getting to 240,000 to replace the inevitable loss of print income.

    Their big problem IMO really is the content just isnt worth paying for. Its not specialised and nor is it in depth and much of it is found for free elsewhere. You never come away from reading the Indo thinking wow Im really glad I read that article like you might from the Guardian or Sunday Times. Its a take it or leave it publication and so far with this paywall strategy many people have chosen to leave it.

    But then you have print, paper and distribution costs for those papers. Not insignificant.


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    #44
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,610 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    oh yeah, Im being generous allowing them 2.4m gross monthly income from print copies sold. By the time printing and distribution happens that sum is significantly lower.

    The silver lining for newspapers is that going digital means the cost of production are significantly lowered and thus theres more profit by taking out the costs of psychically printing it and getting it into shops. But that will only work if they convert a healthy proportion of their print and free app readers into subs. Given a sub works out at about 30c a day and the paper itself costs 2 euro or so they need 6 to 7 times more subscribers to replace the gross revenues from the print readers. Thats a very tall ask and the small numbers signing up so far does not bode well for the future.

    I think digital is the way forward but newspapers need to produce top quality content to get people to pay. The likes of the New York Times or the Guardian have excellent content that they can sell subs on the back of, the Indo does not, far from it imo.


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    #45
    callaway92
    Registered Users Posts: 14,330 ✭✭✭✭callaway92


    dohboy wrote: »
    I would call 7k subs a bounce.

    I don’t think you quite understand the term ‘bounce’.

    How far can their sub number go so do you think? It ain’t gonna spike much above 10k ever if the initial amount was only 7k unless they start putting offers in place.

    For damn sure they’ll have a drop-off from the initial subscribers.


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    #46
    Gekko
    Registered Users Posts: 1,189 ✭✭✭Gekko


    They don’t get all the revenue from newspaper sales.

    There’s Vat, a cut for the retailer, not sure if distributor gets some also


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    #47
    doublej
    Registered Users Posts: 133 ✭✭doublej


    Gekko wrote: »
    They don’t get all the revenue from newspaper sales.

    There’s Vat, a cut for the retailer, not sure if distributor gets some also

    Correct; the Mon-Fri Irish Independent which has a cover price of €2.20 carries 9% VAT, bringing the exVAT price to €2.01.
    The retailer is discounted by 23% (46c) and Newspread the distributor ( a 100% INM subsidiary) receives 5% of the exVAT price, which is 10cent per copy SOLD( not merely distributed).
    The amount available to INM from the physical printed paper is €1.45, out of which the cost of printing.


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    #48
    bobbyss
    Registered Users Posts: 5,190 ✭✭✭bobbyss


    I have the Guardian app and it is brilliant. But I see you pay for some kind of premium service on it if you want to. What extras would you get? it's very good as it is and it is free.


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    #49
    LimeFruitGum
    Registered Users Posts: 996 ✭✭✭LimeFruitGum


    Gekko wrote: »
    Can you get straight in from the app?

    I seem to recall I needed to go through my library website in order to get in to it before

    It doesn't connect with other media/newspaper apps. PressReader has its own app as well, and you login through your library hotspot. It can be a bit fecky to navigate, but you save a fortune on mags and subs.


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    #50
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,610 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Yeah I downloaded Pressreader and got access using my library card and PIN. Its a very clunky app and to read articles every 3 or 4 short paragraphs you have to scroll left to right to read more.Its very frustrating to use. Ive pretty much given up on it, I tried it on the laptop too and its clunky there also.


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